There is something a father feels when he sees his son standing on the edge of something. My oldest son is almost 13. He is not a little boy anymore, nor is he a man. As his dad, I wanted to lay down a marker to acknowledge that he is at the start of a new phase of his life, one that will be full of joys and challenges as he matures.
This year he is finishing elementary school and preparing for his Confirmation. I felt the pull within me that tells you that the moment matters and deserves to be acknowledged. I want to father him well through what is coming and so I started making plans.
What I didn’t realize yet was that someone else was already planning something too.
I started out with a vague direction of where I wanted to go. I knew that I wanted to take a trip together, just the two of us. A trip that would serve as the first marker in the long journey of initiation. I had thoughts of camping or fishing - something rugged and challenging symbolizing the journey ahead. That said, I also wanted it to be something he desired to do and every time we sat down to talk about it, nothing would land. The conversations were good, but none of the ideas captured our imaginations.
Then October happened.
If you are a baseball fan, you already know what last fall was like. My son and I share a passion for baseball, and we lived and died through every inning of the Toronto Blue Jays World Series run, right up to the crushing low of Game 7. In the aftermath, I realized that was its own kind of initiation. Sitting next to my son as he dealt with the disappointment of wanting something so badly and not have it go your way. In doing that, I had to put aside the young boy within me that wanted to throw something at the wall, and instead just be present to him.
In the weeks that followed this experience, an idea started to take shape.
Through a combination of travel points, the generosity of some good friends, and a wife who understood and supported what this was about, I quietly put together a trip to Toronto to watch a Blue Jays game. I couldn’t wait to tell my son. I knew he would be over the moon.
Though a weekend of good food, laughs, and watching our favourite baseball team live would be a great weekend, I had a desire that the trip would be something more than a boys’ weekend away. If this was truly a marker, a beginning of a new phase in his life, it needed weight. It needed something more than I could plan on my own.
I shared my idea with a trusted friend and spiritual mentor, who had no hesitation in advising me. There was simply one, and only one option. So, after landing in Toronto on a Thursday afternoon, we picked up our rental car and headed out of the city toward Midland, Ontario, to a place called Martyrs’ Shrine.
My friend had connected me with the Director of the Shrine, and we had arranged a day of retreat for my son and me. The Jesuit community at the Shrine graciously welcomed us to stay in their guesthouse and Fr. John O’Brien, SJ (no relation), offered to spend some time with us on Friday morning. Knowing that my son was preparing for his Confirmation, Fr. John walked us through the stories of the Canadian Martyrs. We learned of their ministry to the Wendat people in the 17th century, the slow and costly work of sharing the gospel across a vast cultural and linguistic divide, the collaboration that grew between French missionaries and the Wendat, and, ultimately, the brutal deaths that these men suffered as a witness to their faith and commitment to those in their care.
As we listened and experienced our time at the Shrine, I realized that I had not planned this trip nearly as much as I thought I had.
Perhaps the most poignant moment of our pilgrimage was visiting St. Ignace, the site where Saints John de Brebeuf and Gabriel Lalemant were martyred. Standing there together, my son and I read the account of their deaths, reflected, and prayed. The details are brutal. The torture these men endured prior to their deaths is nearly indescribable, yet what stood out for both of us more than the violence was their courage. Their relentless commitment to share their love of Jesus with those present, including the men killing them, was deeply inspiring.
Nearly four hundred years later, we stood on a chilly, bright morning in great appreciation of what our faith costs. As a dad whose greatest desire is to share that faith with my children, it was an incredibly powerful moment.
It was also the moment when a dynamic shifted in my heart.
Up to this point, I had seen myself as the guide, leading my son on a trip of initiation and adventure. But standing together at St. Ignace, that story began to come apart. We weren’t father and son in that moment. We were brothers. Two sons, standing together on holy ground, being cared for by our eternal Father.
In my preparations, I felt a low-grade anxiousness about making the most of our four days together. I thought about the questions I wanted to ask and worried that I hadn’t prepared the right ‘talks’ that I felt we should have or that I might miss the moment.
What became clear was that our trip was never about completing a checklist. It was about showing up and being present. To the place, to each other, to what the Father had already arranged.
St. John de Brebeuf taught me this, four centuries after the fact.
As a Jesuit missionary, Fr. Brebeuf spent more than a decade living among the Wendat people before there were any significant number of baptisms. If the number of baptisms had been his metric for measuring success, Fr. Brebeuf would have been an utter failure.
But Brebeuf stayed, building bridges across culture and language, and through his presence, established trusting relationships and close bonds with those he ministered to. In time, his witness and that of the other French missionaries in the region helped bring thousands to faith.
The parallel was clear—I didn’t need to engineer a series of conversations to make our trip a success. Presence was the point. Realizing this lifted pressure, I wasn’t fully aware I was carrying.
My son probably doesn’t know everything that I experienced on our trip and the shift that occurred along the way. What he knows is that we went and that his dad showed up. What I know now is that I wasn’t nearly as much the author of this trip as I believed. I thought I was taking him on a trip. It turns out we were both being taken by a Father who had mapped out the route and laid out provision, knowing what His two sons needed long before either of us thought to ask.
Sean O’Brien is the Chief Financial Officer for the Archdiocese of Vancouver. This article was originally published on his Substack: The Cedar Life.
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