The Spirit of the Father – The Return of Closeness and Intimacy – On Presence, Chastity and the Healing of the Family

The modern father is present—yet spiritually absent. He loves his children, but barely knows them. He works to feed them, but his soul remains distant. The time he spends with them has become superficial: play instead of education, distraction instead of encounter, entertainment instead of guidance.

The Shadow of Distance

He will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers. (Malachi 3:24)

Thus, the son loses the image of a man, and the daughter loses confidence in masculinity. The father who once led the family today flees to work to escape his powerlessness. But education does not take place at a distance—it takes place through presence, through looks, through words, through attitude.

The Lost Mission

To whom much is given, much will be required. (Luke 12:48)

Education is a priestly ministry. It means opening the world to the child, not hiding it from him. The father should not be the child's friend, but his guide—the one who carries the light so that the son does not stumble in the shadows.

But our society has divided the family into fragments: work versus home, mother versus father, school versus parents. No soul can grow in this fragmentation. The child needs the father not only to be nourished, but to be shaped—through a personal relationship, through lived authority, through affection that is not soft, but alert.

The Teaching of Parzival

Just as Parzival once grew up without a father, so many sons today grow up in the realm of their mothers—protected but not guided. They learn sensitivity, but not direction. They hear that they are free, but no one shows them what freedom costs.

When Parzival enters the castle of the Grail, he remains silent—he does not ask whom the Grail serves. His silence is the silence of the fatherless son: He does not know that love is responsibility. He does not know that compassion demands action.

Only when he loses and rediscovers himself does he recognize the meaning of his trial. Only when he becomes a servant of the Grail does he truly become a man. Thus, Parzival teaches us that the closeness of the Father is not merely tenderness, but initiation—a transition into responsibility, through the fire of the Spirit.

Chastity and the Sanctification of Love

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. (Matthew 5:8)

True closeness between father and child, between man and woman, can only arise when the heart is purified. Therefore, chastity is at the center of education—not as a prohibition, but as a consecration. It protects the sacred in love, it preserves the dignity of the body, it sanctifies the union of man and woman.

Chastity is not a withdrawal from life, but the right ordering of forces. It transforms desire into devotion, lust into responsibility, the body into a temple. Thus, sexuality is sanctified again, and with it the feminine, which has been so often violated in our time.

The greatest temptation of the coming age is artificial lust—the simulation of the feminine without a soul. Pornography created by artificial intelligence becomes man's escape from woman, from relationships, from responsibility. It does not satisfy desire; it quenches the heart. It replaces encounter with an image, and reality with illusion.

Thus, it separates man from the mystery of the feminine—and thus from God himself. For whoever surrenders to an image flees from the incarnation; whoever despises the flesh loses the spirit.

Therefore, man must learn to honor and integrate the feminine, not to consume it. In chastity, the feminine is not suppressed but sanctified—and woman can be feminine again without losing herself.

The Restoration of the Family

Houses and goods are inherited from the fathers, but a prudent woman comes from the Lord. (Proverbs 19:14)

The healing of the world begins in the home. Not in programs, not in structures – but in the family that prays, works, and loves. The family is the smallest church, and the father is its first priest.

When the father is present again – not just physically, but spiritually – trust is born. When the man protects again, the woman can breathe again. When the father educates, the child can grow.

In this way, family and society become healthy again because they are based on order – on love that has form, on freedom that knows purpose. The man must learn to see the person – not the role, not the functional. For relationship is the place where spirit is realized.
Only through personal connection does education come alive.

The Returning One

Arise, for this son of mine was dead and has come to life again. (Luke 15:24)

When the father returns, life returns. When the man loves again by leading, the family becomes whole again. The New Evangelization begins not in the pulpits, but at the table, where the father prays, shares the bread, and reaches into the hearts of his children with his gaze.

Thus, absent fatherhood is transformed into a priestly presence. And the man, who has found himself, once again becomes the image of the father—strong, quiet, and pious.

Then the feminine is honored again, the child secure again, and the spirit once again reigns over the house. Then the work of the Nigredo is fulfilled: from fragmentation comes unity,
from weakness, strength, from flight—presence.

The Spirit of the Father

The righteous walks in his integrity; blessed are his children after him! (Proverbs 20:7)

The true protection of children is not of stone, not of walls, but of spirit.
When the father is inwardly awake, his house is blessed. His presence alone, his gaze, his prayer, his attitude—they form the invisible wall behind which the child's soul can rest.

Therefore, the father must ensure that the children are with him—not just physically, but spiritually. For when the father's spirit is extinguished, the coldness of the world penetrates the heart of the home.

The father protects not through control, but through presence. He is like the fire on the altar—visible or invisible, but always burning. As long as his spirit is present, no false spirit can take root.

Thus, the father's house becomes a temple again, the family a cell of light,
and the child an heir of the faith.