Preface: Spiritual Life Insurance

Why does 'Letters to My Children' exist?

These letters are actual, essentially unaltered letters that I am writing for my children. The purpose of them, as I explain in the first letter, is to provide a sort of “spiritual life insurance” to my children so that if God should call me home while they are are still young they will have the voice of their father to help guide them through the tumultuous seas of our culture to the safe harbor of Heaven. I believe this is an especially necessary undertaking in our time.

The reason being that fathers have an outsized impact on the faith on whether or not their children will continue in the practice of their faith. But what if the father dies? While I hope and pray for a religious revival, and I believe there are signs that one may indeed be coming, the fact is that the Christian West has fallen and it is yet to be seen whether or not she shall rise before the Resurrection when Christ returns. We live in a post-Christian culture and we do not have the luxury of hoping that if our children are, God forbid, orphaned or left without a father they will have other faithful Christians with sufficient proximity and influence in their lives to counteract the prevailing culture.

For these reasons, since I do not know the hour or the day the Lord will call me, I am convicted that my duty as a father to provide spiritually for my children requires me to write a series of letters for my children to instruct, advise, and encourage them in the faith, directly from the heart of their father, in the event that they need to continue the hard, narrow journey to Paradise without me.

When I first conceived of the idea to write these letters, I had planned to simply hand-write them, make digital copies to be safe, and then leave instructions in my will concerning their location and distribution. However, as I continued to pray about my reasons for writing, especially as I tried to personally trust God’s love and care for my children in the awful event of having to leave them prematurely, I began to think about God’s love for all children. God loves each of us as if there were only one of us. Not only does God love my children infinitely more than I ever can, but He also loves each person on this earth with that same unique love. Each person, no matter how wayward they may have gone as they’ve aged, began as an innocent child - just like my children.

Contemplating these realities gave me renewed compassion for all those who lack fathers — spiritually, physically, or both. These letters are written specifically for my children. If my children are the only ones who ever read these, I will be very content and have accomplished my purpose. However, I am also making them available to you, so that if you, or someone you know, might be edified by these letters then they are here for you. I cannot be a father to all of those who are alone, fatherless, lost... I have a hard enough time trying to be a decent father to my own four children! But we all have one Father, in Heaven, and I know that He can use the words I write to my children to speak directly to you, or any one of His children that He chooses, with the same love, sincerity, and intimacy that I do to my children (indeed, infinitely more so). God writes straight with crooked lines, and I pray for each of you reading these, especially those who desire a spiritual father, that God will use these imperfect letters to communicate His perfect Fatherly love to you.

A few quick introductory notes for anyone reading these.

First of all, I am a faithful Catholic, and I trust completely Jesus’ promise to preserve his Church by the power of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, I submit everything I write to the judgement of the Church. If there is ever an apparent conflict between what I write and the teaching of the Church, then I submit wholly to the teaching of the Church, and the reader should know that I advocate for no other position than the true teaching of the Church in the matter.

Second, these letters will be included in their exact original form and content. The only modifications I will make to the actual text of the letters are redactions for privacy (e.g. the name “John” might be abbreviated to a single letter “J.”). Also, since these are personal letters, there will necessarily be references and context that public readers will not understand. As a result, I will include footnotes in the published letters as needed. These footnotes and the redactions are the only modifications I intend make to the original letters, unless otherwise stated.

Finally, I will be praying for each of you as best as I can and trusting that God will use these letters to speak to each of you particularly.  I am making this first post on September 27th, 2024, and committing this endeavor to the patronage of Our Lady, Star of the Sea. Through her intercession, may each of us be guided safely through the storms of this present darkness to our true Father, who art in Heaven.

Our Lady, Star of the Sea, pray for us!