We continue today on our meditation of The Our Father:
Ephesians 4:6:
One God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.
Malachi 2:10: Have
we not all one Father? Has not one God created us? Why then are we faithless to
one another, profaning the covenant of our fathers?
I was blessed to have a wonderful father (God rest his
soul). He was loving and kind, yet firm and disciplined. He worked hard at his
job yet held primacy in his life to ‘mia familia’, held to the truth in all
situations, and took no foolishness from us kids or anyone else. He taught me
incredible life skills, especially to always show mercy, yet live and expect
others to live to a high standard. I wrote a book once and dedicated it to my
father. The dedication read, “To my dad. Because of him I know how to love God
as Father.” I was blessed, and I know it, yet even my dad was not even close to
the glory of my Father in heaven. He was a good example, though, and so many dads are anything but examples of God
as father.
When we think of God as our Father, then, it is important
to get rid of all human images of Him and simply dwell on our Father who is
loving, kind, merciful and just. He created the world and all that is in it. He
created each and every one of us out of love, and has a plan for each of us to
achieve in His creation. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches us:
2779 Before
we make our own this first exclamation of the Lord's Prayer, we must humbly
cleanse our hearts of certain false images drawn "from this world." Humility makes
us recognize that "no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one
knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal
him," that is, "to little children." The purification of
our hearts has to do with paternal or maternal images, stemming from our
personal and cultural history, and influencing our relationship with God. God
our Father transcends the categories of the created world. To impose our own ideas
in this area "upon him" would be to fabricate idols to adore or pull
down. To pray to the Father is to enter into his mystery as he is and as the
Son has revealed him to us.
2781 When
we pray to the Father, we are in communion with him and with
his Son, Jesus Christ. Then we know and recognize him with an ever new
sense of wonder. The first phrase of the Our Father is a blessing of adoration
before it is a supplication. For it is the glory of God that we should
recognize him as "Father," the true God. We give him thanks for
having revealed his name to us, for the gift of believing in it, and for the
indwelling of his Presence in us
Like any family, we probably would like to consider some
of our brothers and sisters in the family of God as somehow less than worthy,
or less than deserving of God’s love. But this is not the case. God loves each
and every one of us as a Father loves all of His children. He may not need to
worry as much about some as others; He may be disappointed in some and pleased
in others, and He may be hoping that some of His children will stop being so
pleased with themselves and get going on helping their brothers and sisters get
to heaven. It is true. We must love everyone, for we are family. We may not
like everyone, and we certainly can choose to not like everything our brothers
and sisters do, but we must love them enough to help get them to heaven. My mom
always said, “Well, you don’t get to pick your family so learn to live with
them.” God as our Father wants us to stop seeking division, and unite in the
common goal of helping each other get back to Him.
Caryll Houselander, one of my favorite Catholic writers,
says it so well when she states:
Our oneness, our kinship, everything that binds us,
depends on this, that God is our Father. This decides our attitude to our
enemies. The enemy may kill our brothers, but he is himself our brother. A hard
fact? Yes, it may be, but deny it and we deny God’s Fatherhood.
Christ is brother to us all. God is Father to us all. Our
Father loves all his children and grieves over all their suffering, all their
sins, all their blindness, all their folly. Think of all Christ says of our
Father: the story of the prodigal son; the gifts of sun and rain to the just
and the unjust alike; how often he stresses that none on this earth are exempt
from his bounty, that we may not sort out, separate, good from bad; God is the
Father, intent upon saving everyone. God is the Father of sinners as well as
saints. He is the Father of the poor, Father of the afflicted, he expects us to
treat them all as brothers, as his dear children.
Having one common Father we have certain fundamental
things in common; all want happiness, no matter how different the conception of
it; all desire to love; all have some family resemblance to God our Creator,
our Father. Therefore this Fatherhood is our one hope for peace for the coming
of God’s kingdom, for all else that we pray for in the “Our Father.”(This War is the Passion, 2008, Ave Maria
Press, Inc., Notre Dame, Indiana)
In a world that is so divided on almost every issue, that
has chosen to hate instead of love, that puts self above self-sacrifice, let us
choose today to let God, our Father, use us in any way He sees fit to bring all
His children back into His loving presence.
Father, I am yours. Do with me as you will. I love you.
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