Praise be Jesus and Mary, now and forever. 
Today's first reading, taken from the first letter of St. Paul to the Thessalonians, the apostle, speaks of his role as a spiritual father. He says in 1 Thessalonians 2:11-12, "As you know, we treated each of you as a father treats his children, exhorting and encouraging you and insisting that you walk in a manner worthy of God, of the God who calls you into His kingdom and glory." It was last September we gave a reflection on spiritual fatherhood. We'll just offer a few words on it today as well.
It's very clear that St. Paul presents himself as a spiritual father in his letters. For example, in 1 Corinthians 4:15-16, he says, "Though you have countless guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers, for I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel. I urge you then be imitators of me." So we should imitate the example of St. Paul's faithfulness to the gospel, obviously, but there's also a call to imitate his spiritual fatherhood.
The essential role of a spiritual father is that they work to educate their child into maturity. Educate comes from the Latin word educere, so the prefix is ex, which means out, and then ducere, which means to lead. So a spiritual father helps to lead their children out of darkness into light, out of immaturity to maturity, out of sin into grace, out of ignorance to a greater understanding of God's plan and how He is working in their lives. True fathers are educators. By their words and choices and actions, and even by their attitudes, they teach their children how to live.
We share this often, but when our Lord says in the Sermon on the Mount, "Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect," Matthew 5:48, the word perfect there in the Greek text is the word teleos. Teleos means whole, mature, complete. It doesn't mean never making mistakes. So "Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect" means be mature as He is mature. Mature in what? Well, what's the context of the verse there? The context is that our Lord is talking about charity, specifically about loving those who are our enemies and those who are difficult to love. And the sister verse to Matthew 5:48 in the Sermon on the Mount is Luke 6:36, where in the Sermon on the Plain, our Lord says, "Be merciful as your Father is merciful." So maturity in God's eyes is found in charity and mercy.
How do I be charitable in my relationships with God and with others? How do I exercise mercy towards them and even towards myself? A spiritual father helps a child navigate that, and they teach, they educate their child about also how to reframe their life. Reframing means seeing God's hand in my life and what's happened to me and beginning to see it all as my sharing in the life of Jesus. The good, the bad, the ugly as well of life in my life. It's all part of my sharing in Christ's life. We were created for Him, for Christ, as St. Paul says in Colossians 1:16. We are one with Him, as the apostle says in 1 Corinthians 6:17. St. Paul says that Jesus is the head of the Church, Ephesians 4:15, and that we are, "The body of the Christ and individually members of it," 1 Corinthians 12:27.
So since I truly belong to Jesus Christ, since I was made for Him and through baptism, I'm a part of Him. I'm a part of His body, the Church, then whatever I go through in life, Jesus says that those experiences are also His experiences. It's like when a child goes through joys or happinesses or disappointments or struggles or sufferings, is it just the child that experiences those things? Or does the loving parent also experience them with the child? But with our baptism, with our incorporation into Christ, it's actually even more intimate than that. Our union with Jesus is even more profound and more intimate than the union of a child with their loving father or mother, or the union of two very close friends, or the union of a devoted house husband with his cherished wife. Our union with Jesus is even deeper than all that.
Someone might say, "Well, my sins certainly are not a sharing in Jesus's life, right?" To which I would respond, "You sure about that?" In 1 Peter 2:24, Jesus says that Jesus, "Bore our sins in His own body on a tree." He takes on your sins as if they are His own. In short, a good spiritual father helps their child reframe their life as a sharing in the life of Jesus, and a good spiritual father also shares in the life of their child, in the good, in the bad, and even in the ugly, too.
Another trait of a good spiritual father is that they look to instill confidence in their child. They educate their child in the school of confidence. The word confidence comes from the Latin word confidere, con, which means with, fidere, which means trust. A spiritual father cultivates trust in their child, trust in the Lord and reliance on Him first and foremost, but also a humble and a healthy trust in the child's own God-given talents and abilities and gifts. We all have gifts and talents that the Lord has given to us, and a good spiritual father encourages us to put those to good use for the building up of the Lord's kingdom.
Cultivating trust and confidence means helping to banish fear from the heart of their child and help replace that fear with faith. The fear of the Lord is one thing. A spirit of fear or fearfulness or living in fear, that's something very different. The fear of the Lord is a gift from God. It gives us a loving, respectful disposition towards Him as our loving Father. Living with a spirit of fear is a way of living that's actually not from the Lord. Spirit of fear is more of an attitude of a slave or a servant who always worries about being punished, and so they try to behave well because they just don't want to be punished. It's what we call servile fear. In itself, spiritually, it's okay. So start in the right direction if it keeps us away from serious sin. But in its worst manifestations, it can take the form of having a view of God as a harsh landlord or overlord, like a servant with the one talent. In Matthew 25:24-25, who says to God, "I knew you to be a hard or a harsh man. So out of fear, I went off and buried your talent in the ground." In reality, that servant didn't know God at all, in reality.
Instead, the Lord wants us to have a filial fear, which means avoiding sin simply because we don't want to hurt our good God. But filial fear is also doing good out of love for Him. It's living the life of a loving and beloved child, not the life of a frightened slave. And again, a good spiritual father helps cultivate that spirit of faith and trust in their child in that regard.
Next trait of a spiritual father is that they are also detectives, believe it or not. They actually work to detect how the Holy Spirit is working in the lives of their children. Since the children belong to God, actually, and He's the one who leads them. So spiritual fathers should not be dictators, they should be detectives. If they have eyes to see and ears to hear, the Lord will give them the clues to help guide their children properly, remembering that the plot or the plan for that child in God's eyes is always conforming to Christ, as St. Paul says in Romans 8:29.
And lastly for today, a good spiritual father helps educate their child in freedom. "I will run the way of your commands. You give freedom to my heart," says the psalmist to the Lord in Psalm 119:32. And St. Paul in 2 Corinthians 3:17 adds, "Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom." Spiritual father helps their child embrace the gift of freedom and liberty that the Holy Spirit wants to give them. It's interior freedom, and it's the freedom to say yes to the Lord each day, to cultivate and share and put to good use the gifts that He's given. And it's the freedom to become the person that God actually created them to be.
In nurturing this spirit of freedom, a spiritual father helps assist the Holy Spirit as He, the Holy Spirit, instills more and more life and love and hope and peace and wisdom in the mind and the heart of their child. And why does a spiritual father work to do all these things, to educate their child in these and other ways? Well, it's because they truly love their child. They love them with the love of the heart of Jesus Himself.
So let's ask our Blessed Mother for the grace to have more spiritual fathers and spiritual mothers as well in the Church, men and women who truly have a heart for what's best for God's children and who work to educate them in the ways of perfection. 
Praised be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.