Your Father Will Ordain You

In the talk I referenced yesterday from President Packer, he quoted this statement from President Joseph F. Smith: “It sometimes happens that the elders are called in to administer to the members of a family. Among these elders there may be presidents of stakes, apostles, or even members of the first presidency of the Church. It is not proper under these circumstances for the father to stand back and expect the elders to direct the administration of this important ordinance. The father is there. It is his right and it is his duty to preside.” President Packer then told two stories to help illustrate this principle. He recounted, “During the Vietnam War, we held a series of special meetings for members of the Church called into military service. After such a meeting in Chicago, I was standing next to President Harold B. Lee when a fine young Latter-day Saint told President Lee that he was on leave to visit his home and then had orders to Vietnam. He asked President Lee to give him a blessing. Much to my surprise, President Lee said, ‘Your father should give you the blessing.’” The boy was disappointed but left with instructions for how to help his father give him a blessing. A couple years later President Packer met this boy again. He related, “He reminded me of that experience and said, ‘I did as I was told to do. I explained to my father that I would sit on the chair and that he should put his hands on my head. The power of the priesthood filled both of us. That was a strength and protection in those perilous months of battle.’” Surely having his father give him that blessing was of far more value than having an apostle do it. The whole purpose of the church is to unite families eternally and enable them to return to the presence of their eternal Father, so our actions here should be focused on that final end.

                The second story President Packer told was particularly powerful to me. He recounted, “Another time I was in a distant city. After a conference we were ordaining and setting apart leaders. As we concluded, the stake president asked, ‘Can we ordain a young man to be an elder who is leaving for the mission field?’ The answer, of course, was yes. As the young man came forward, he motioned for three brethren to follow and stand in for his ordination. I noticed on the back row a carbon copy of this boy, and I asked, ‘Is that your father?’ The young man said, ‘Yes.’ I said, ‘Your father will ordain you.’ And he protested, ‘But I’ve already asked another brother to ordain me.’ And I said, ‘Young man, your father will ordain you, and you’ll live to thank the Lord for this day.’ Then the father came forward…. The father did not know how to ordain his son. I put my arm around him and coached him through the ordinance. When he was finished, the young man was an elder. Then something wonderful happened. Completely changed, the father and son embraced. It was obvious that had never happened before. The father, through his tears, said, ‘I didn’t get to ordain my other boys.’ Think how much more was accomplished than if another had ordained him, even an Apostle.” I love President Packer’s insistent response to the young man: “Your father will ordain you.” And it makes me sad to think that this father didn’t have the opportunity to ordain his other sons, likely because they didn’t value enough his position as their father. The priesthood is the same whether in a humble Elder who little experience or in the president of the church. What matters is not that someone receives a blessing or ordination from someone of supposed high status in the church but that all we do works to unite and seal families today. Someday all of the apostles will get released of their callings, but fathers will not. The church and its organization and leadership is the scaffolding that is helping families to gain eternal life—in the next life the scaffolding will be discarded and only the permanent structure of eternal families will remain.

                I think we see this principle on display in the first chapters of the Book of Mormon through the life of Lehi. He was called to be a prophet to the people of Jerusalem, and he labored diligently to cry repentance to them. He was ultimately rejected by the Jews, and his time spent trying to preach to them reached an end rather quickly in the text. He was in fact, released from that calling and sent away to a promised land with his family. But he spent his whole life, up to the very end, as a father seeking to call his boys to repentance. He never was released from that duty. After arriving in the new world, he pled with Laman and Lemuel this way: “Awake! and arise from the dust, and hear the words of a trembling parent, whose limbs ye must soon lay down in the cold and silent grave, from whence no traveler can return; a few more days and I go the way of all the earth…. And now that my soul might have joy in you, and that my heart might leave this world with gladness because of you, that I might not be brought down with grief and sorrow to the grave, arise from the dust, my sons, and be men, and be determined in one mind and in one heart, united in all things, that ye may not come down into captivity;… Awake, my sons; put on the armor of righteousness. Shake off the chains with which ye are bound, and come forth out of obscurity, and arise from the dust” (2 Nephi 1:14, 21, 23). As a father, he never gave up trying to help them repent and come to the Lord. His story clearly shows that his most important duty was to his family as a husband and father. We should never let position or prominence in the church blind us to what really matters. President Packer perhaps put it best in his famous statement about what our focus in the church and in our lives should be: “The ultimate end of all activity in the Church is that a man and his wife and their children might be happy at home, protected by the principles and laws of the gospel, sealed safely in the covenants of the everlasting priesthood.”