What good happens in spite of my shortcomings, because of my nature, isn't an accident, but a participation in God's life, and in his design for fatherhood.
The prick of the inevitable “perhaps” in our mind is an indirect perception of the Son of God; the Unconquered Sun who knows us, and whose knowledge of us causes us to be able to know at all.
Motherhood is obvious; fatherhood is not. Fatherhood is tenuous and perceptible only at several removes. It is an anxious condition, and from this anxiety has been born much mischief.