St. John tells us, “No one has ever seen God. The only Son, God, who is at the Father’s side, has revealed him. (John 1:18)” Jesus is “the refulgence of (God’s) glory, the very imprint of his being, (Hebrews 1:2)” so that all we know about God has been told to us by Christ, even what was revealed in the first law through the patriarchs, Moses and the prophets. Moreover, all faith, even implicitly comes through Christ, as St. Paul tried to teach the Athenians, “What you unknowingly worship, I proclaim to you. (Acts 17:23)” This is why Jesus is able to answer the apostle Philip, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. (John 14:9)”
Jesus’ revelation about God is that he is our Father. Therefore, when the disciples ask Jesus how to pray, he says, “This is how you are to pray, Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. (Matthew 6:9)” The Christians of the apostolic age remembered well this revelation of our Lord, as St. Paul wrote, “As proof that you are children, God sent the spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying out, ‘Abba, Father!’ (Galatians 4:6)” This experience was so intense that the familiar name for a father, ‘Abba,” somewhat like the English, “Dad,” was used. This was how Jesus prayed in the garden of Gethsemane before his arrest, “Abba, Father, all things are possible to you. Take this cup away from me, but not what I will but what you will. (Mark 14:36)” Jesus repaired the disobedience of Adam by his perfect obedience to the Father, and taught us to pray in the same way, “your will be done, on earth as in heaven. (Matthew 6:10)” The goal of a father is, by fatherly love for the child he has procreated, to bring out in him or her the full potentiality of life. St. Paul likewise tells us that in God “we all attain to the unity of faith and knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the extent of the full stature of Christ. (Ephesians 4:13)” The apostle here uses a male image, since we are brought to maturity in Christ, who was a man, but this saying is meant for all the faithful, and is founded on the words of Jesus, “Be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect. (Matthew 5:48)”
Father in human life means a man who enters a physical relationship with a woman he loves, so that she conceives and gives birth to a child. In human society, the father is traditionally the lover and protective supporter of his family. He must commit himself to this service and love. St. Paul writes, “Husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. (Ephesians 5:28)” St. Paul gives the primacy to the man, but this does not mean that he is to be a tyrant, and, indeed, the husband and wife should function as a single person “subordinate to one another out of reverence for Christ. (Ephesians 5:21)” In this way, the father contributes to bringing new life into the world, not simply through carnal relationships but by on-going support and love. As human beings, fathers cannot always live up to the ideal, and, unfortunately, in their weakness, are sometimes failures.
God as our Father is not our life-giver through carnal relations. God is our life-giver in the Spirit, as St. John witnesses, “to those who did accept him (Jesus) he gave power to become children of God, to those who believe in his name, who were born not by natural generation nor by human choice nor by a man’s decision but of God. (John 1:12-13)” Since God is not our Father according to the flesh, the Church has discouraged and, at times, even forbidden images of the Father to be made. This has not always been followed in practice, and at times the Father has been depicted as an old man with a white beard. However, our holy Father Augustine said quite clearly, “Avoid conceiving of God as an old man with a very venerable look …. Do you want to see God? Stop at this thought: God is Love. What image does Love have? No one can say.” (PL 35:2034a) For this reason the more authentic tradition of depicting the Trinity is only as the three angels who visited Abraham (Genesis 18:1-5). Certainly, however, God has a physical relationship to us, for he is the Creator of all matter. He has brought us out of non-being into being in both body and soul. For this reason, the earthly father really only participates with God, the true Life-giver, in his act of giving life and existence itself to all living creatures.
Because God is our Creator, to say that he is not our Father by way of human generation is not to diminish his fatherhood. God may not be not our earthly father, but as our heavenly Father he is our supreme life-giver, lover, protector and nourisher. God the Father is the perfection of all fatherhood and the model for every human father. St. Paul, therefore, wrote, “For this reason, then, I kneel before the Father from whom all fatherhood in Heaven and on earth derives its name. (Ephesians 3:14-15)” We learn the art of fatherhood from God, so that we, too, as humans can give life not only physically but also in spirit. Since Christ is the revealer of the Father and his exact image, the one of the equal Trinity that took human flesh, we become fathers by imitating Christ. Jesus came to give us forgiveness and life, freedom and fulfillment, faith and love. The goal of this year is to learn more of the Father. This knowledge is the basis of our sanctification and transformation into children of God, which is accomplished only in the power of the Holy Spirit. Interestingly, some of the fathers of the Church give an alternate petition to “Thy Kingdom come” in the Lord’s Prayer: “May your Holy Spirit come upon us and cleanse us.
Monday, September 30 –
