Our Father God

By Fr. Conor Donnelly

(Proofread)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

“But when you fast,” we’re told in St. Matthew, “put scent on your head and wash your face, so that no one will know that you are fasting, except your Father, who sees all that is done in secret. And your Father who sees all that is done in secret will reward you” (Matt. 6:17).

Our Father God is always by our side.

As Moses tended the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro, near Mount Horeb, the holy mountain, God appeared to him in a burning bush. There Moses was given the extraordinary task—his life’s work—of leading the chosen people out of the slavery of Egypt into the Promised Land. God confirmed him in his mission with the words, “I will be with you” (Ex. 3:1-6, 9-12).

In our prayer today we could repeat those words, reminding ourselves that God has told us that He will always be with us.

In another place in Scripture, He says, “Do not let your hearts be troubled” (John 14:1), “for I am with you always” (Matt. 28:20). Many consoling words.

Moses little imagined how closely God would be accompanying him and the people in the midst of the trials and tribulations that awaited them. In our lives too, God’s presence at every moment is something we can scarcely fathom—how He is working.

Fulton Sheen tells a story narrating how a ray of sunlight jumped from out of the azure sky and came down, down, down to a little droplet of muddy water in a puddle. It took hold of this little droplet of muddy water and lifted it up high, high, high above the clouds and deposited it as an immaculate snowflake on a mountain top, so that as it melts it makes the valleys fertile (Fulton Sheen, Sermon, September 22, 1940).

Unbeknownst to us, God is working all the time behind the scenes. That presence of God in our life takes on an even greater definition when God sees us on the road to holiness. He’s like a father minding a toddler.

Every time we see a young father walking with a young baby, it’s worth taking a second look because there’s something there to learn for us about how Our Father God is taking care of us.

Our Lord, true God and true man, is always reminding us in the Gospel of God’s paternal concern, since “no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him” (Matt. 11:27). He alone can do this.

The Son knows the Father in the very knowledge by which the Father knows Him. There’s no greater intimacy than that.

This identity of knowing and knowledge bespeaks the unity of the divine nature. In claiming it, Jesus revealed that He was God.

As the Son, one in substance with the Father, He is also able to reveal the Father’s relationship with and attitude towards us, and in particular, His goodness in granting us the gift of the Holy Spirit. The mystery of the Blessed Trinity is at the heart of what He had to reveal to us, and with it and in it, we find the wonder of God’s fatherhood.

It’s an interesting word: “wonder.” Little children wonder. Often they can’t understand the great realities, but they wonder.

During that last evening in the Upper Room, when Our Lord seemed to be summing up the years of self-giving and trusting revelation, He said, “I have manifested your name to the men whom you gave me” (John 17:6).

To manifest someone’s name really meant to reveal their mode of being. Our Lord has revealed to us the depths of the Trinitarian Mystery: the fact that God is a Father, so close to us men.

He dwells on the goodness of the Father, who rewards the slightest action and recognizes our good deeds, even the ones that no one sees.

“But when you give alms, your left hand must not know what your right hand is doing. Your almsgiving must be in secret. And your Father who sees all that is done in secret will reward you” (Matt. 6:3-4).

“But when you fast, put scent on your head and wash your face, so that no one will know you’re fasting except your Father, who sees all that is done in secret. And your Father who sees all that is done in secret will reward you” (Matt. 6:17-18).

He bestows bounty on the just and on the unjust. In St. Matthew we’re told, “But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven. For he causes his sun to rise on the bad as well as the good, and sends down rain to fall on the upright and the wicked alike” (Matt. 5:44-45).

This loving Father is always aware of and concerned about what we need.

We’re told in other places in Scripture: “Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, everyone who searches finds, everyone who knocks will have the door opened” (Matt. 7:7-8).

And elsewhere in Scripture, we’re told: “That is why I am telling you not to worry about your life and what you are to eat, nor about your body and what you are to wear. Surely life is more than food, and the body more than clothing.

“Look at the birds in the sky: they do not sow or reap or gather into barns. Yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they are? Can any of you, however much you worry, add one single cubit to your span of life?

“And why worry about clothing? Think of the flowers growing in the fields: they never have to work or spin. Yet I assure you that not even Solomon in all his royal robes was clothed like one of these.

“Now if that is how God clothes the wildflowers growing in the field, which are there today and thrown into the furnace tomorrow, will he not much more look after you, you who have so little faith? So do not worry. Do not say, ‘What are we to eat? What are we to drink? What are we to wear?’ It is the Gentiles who set their hearts on all these things.

“Your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. Set your hearts on his kingdom first and God’s saving justice, and all these things will be given to you as well” (Matt. 6:25-33).

These are very encouraging and consoling words.

Jesus encourages us to have the word ‘Father’ like a constant refrain on our lips, reminding ourselves that this Father is never far away, no more than a father who sees a little toddler alone and in danger. If we try to please Him, we will find Him by our side.

In The Forge we’re told: “When you really come to love God’s Will, you will never, even in the worst state of agitation, lose sight of the fact that Our Father in heaven is always close to you, very close, right next to you, with his everlasting Love and with his unbounded affection” (Josemaría Escrivá, The Forge, Point 240).

When you’re at Mass, when you’re looking through the words of the Eucharistic Prayer, try and notice how frequently the word ‘Father’ appears in the liturgy. It’s like a daily reminder:

The way to be true children of God the Father is by imitating Christ. God didn’t just make us and then leave us, like a painter with his painting. He’s a father to us, and He’s even brought us to be “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Pet. 1:4).

Beautiful phrase that we find in the letter of St. Peter worth contemplating: He’s lifted us up to be “partakers of the divine nature.” That’s why living in the state of grace is the most important goal that we should have for our life.

We’re told also in St. John’s Letter that the Father’s desire is “that we should be called children of God, and so we are” (1 John 3:1). Being children of God is not something we achieve on our own; it’s a gift from God. Pondering this will make us thank Him each day.

The sense of our divine filiation will be at the root of our joy and confidence in carrying out the mission that God has given to us. In it we find assurance in the face of difficulty and anguish.

“Father, my Father,” we can find ourselves saying, savoring that gentle but strong word ‘Father,’ be it at times of joy or of danger.

In Friends of God, we’re told, “Call him ‘Father’ many times a day and tell him—alone, in your heart—that you love him, that you adore him, that you feel proud and strong because you are his child” (J. Escrivá, Friends of God, Point 150).

It is through Christ that we share in this divine sonship, as we try to resemble Him, the firstborn among many brethren and the only begotten Son of the Father.

The more like Jesus we become, the more God the Father will see us as His children, if we try to work as He did, if we too have pity on the people we meet each day, if we make reparation for sin and show our thanks, as Our Lord did.

But we achieve this above all by imitating Christ’s prayer to His Father. This can mean bursting into praise and thanksgiving for the many expressions of God’s love that we encounter.

Cardinal Văn Thuận, a Vietnamese Cardinal imprisoned for many decades in solitary confinement, tells a story of how some of the prison guards that were looking after him were curious when they knew that he knew some Latin.

They asked him to teach them some Latin. So he taught them Latin. Then he decided to teach them the hymn, the Veni Creator, which is one of the most beautiful hymns that we have in the Catholic Church to the Holy Spirit.

And so, when the guard learned this hymn, he would come every morning singing the Veni Creator to open the prison cell each morning. This was like a gift from God in his solitary confinement (cf. Francis Xavier Nguyen Văn Thuận, Testimonies of Hope).

We can find ourselves thanking God in a special way.

In St. Matthew we’re told, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth” (Matt. 11:25). It’s very appropriate that, as the Preface tells us each day, that we be “always and everywhere” giving thanks to God our Father.

We can say, ‘Thank you for bringing this friend of mine back to the sacraments, for helping me with my family, for giving me the opportunity to open my heart in spiritual direction.’

St. Josemaría recommended that we should each day also thank God for all the graces of which we are not aware. There must be millions and millions of graces that God has given to us in the course of our life, which we’re not aware of at all.

If our minds and hearts turn to God often, in good times and in bad, then we’re living as good children should. In the Psalms we’re told, “My soul, give thanks to the Lord, all my being, bless his holy name. My soul, give thanks to the Lord, and never forget all his blessings. It is he who forgives all your guilt, who heals every one of your ills, who redeems your life from the grave, who crowns you with love and compassion” (Ps. 103:1-4).

We could ask for the grace to see other people as Christ saw them. The world looks very different through His eyes! It is the Holy Spirit who configures us to the Master.

St. Paul tells us, “For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God” (Rom. 8:14).

St. John Chrysostom explains that it is “through the spirit that we belong to Christ, we possess him, and we vie with the angels.

“Through the spirit,” he says, “we crucify the flesh, we taste the joy of eternal life, we possess the pledge of the resurrection, and make sure progress on the path of virtue” (John Chrysostom, Homilies on Romans, 13). Divine filiation is the easiest way to reach the Blessed Trinity.

St. Irenaeus says, “How often we have reflected on God’s mercy and how he chose to become man so that man could, in a sense, become God” (cf. Irenaeus, Against Heresies, Book 5, Preface; Catechism of the Catholic Church, Point 460), sharing His very life.

And so, union with Christ is a consequence of our divine filiation.

The sanctifying grace that we receive in the sacraments and as a reward for our good works identifies us with Christ and makes us ‘sons in the Son,’ since God the Father has only one Son and it is only ‘in Christ’ that we can attain to this divine filiation.

We become united and identified with Him as members of His Mystical Body, as St. Paul wrote to the Galatians: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Gal. 2:20).

So when we turn to the Father, it is really Christ who is praying in us. When we deny ourselves something for Him, it is He who has inspired this detachment of spirit. When we try to bring someone back to the sacraments, our apostolic spirit is a reflection of Christ’s zeal for souls.

Our work and our sufferings complete the works and sufferings which Our Lord took on for His Mystical Body the Church. We could think of the value which our daily work and sorrows assume then in this light.

The interior struggle which brings us, with the help of grace, to be conformed to Christ also moves us to “have this mind among yourselves, which was also in Christ Jesus,” says St. Paul (Phil. 2:5).

And this in turn makes us ‘more’ children of God, so to speak. In the ordinary way, one cannot be more or less the son of one’s father, though one could be a better or a worse one.

In the supernatural sphere, the holier one is, the more one is a son or daughter of God, not just a better one. This is the real goal of the Christian life: a constant growth in divine filiation.

Our Mother Mary is the perfect example of what divine grace can achieve when it’s fully availed of. No one, excepting the sacred Humanity of Our Lord, was ever closer to God, and no created being could ever become the Daughter of God the Father that she was.

We can ask her to make us seek the counsel of the Holy Spirit, who will lead us to imitate Jesus. Under His influence, we’ll feel this pressing need to turn to the Father at all times, but particularly at Mass, when we address Him as Most Merciful Father in the First Eucharistic Prayer, in union with the sacrifice of His Son.

We will think of Him as Father, calling Him Abba, anointed as we are by the spirit of His Son who cries out, “Abba, Father!”, says St. Paul (Gal. 4:6).

He will also make us feel the hunger and thirst for God and for His glory, which were so apparent in His Incarnate Son.

The Father also receives glory from our growing more like His only begotten Son, who “by the power at work within us,” says St. Paul to the Ephesians, “is able to do far more abundantly than all we ask or think. Glory be to him” whose power working in us can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine (Eph. 3:20-21).

Our Father God is always our safeguard against the difficulties and temptations that we may have to undergo. We can win every battle with Him at our side.

The whole history of the Incarnation opens with the words, “Do not be afraid, Mary” (Luke 1:30). In the presence of the supernatural there is often fear, but God comes to calm our fears.

Likewise with St. Joseph: “Do not be afraid, Joseph, son of David” (Matt. 1:20). He’s told to calm down. God comes to bring him peace.

And also to the shepherds, the angel says, “Do not be afraid, for I bring you good tidings of great joy which will be to all the people” (Luke 2:10). This beginning of God’s coming into the world marks a style proper to Our Lord’s presence among men.

Later on, when Our Lord was crossing the Sea of Galilee, the boat was swamped by the waves. St. Mark puts this event in its proper context.

It was the evening of the day on which Our Lord had narrated the parables of the kingdom of heaven (Mark 4:35).

The Gospel explains that Our Lord, tired out after hours of preaching, was asleep in the boat. The storm must have been tremendous, because the disciples, accustomed as they were to the sea, nevertheless saw themselves in great danger. And they cried out for Our Lord to save them: “Lord, save us, for we perish!” (Matt. 8:25).

From the start, the apostles understood why Our Lord was asleep. He must have been very tired not to have been awakened by the waves. They did everything in their power to avert the danger, rowing hard, bailing out the water. But gradually the storm began to get the better of them, and they were in imminent danger of sinking. There’s a great sense of urgency in their words: “Save us, for we are perishing.”

The fears that we may experience often stem from the awareness that the security of our life is based on very weak foundations. In that case, we’re forgetting an essential truth: that God is our constant security. That doesn’t mean that we are insensitive to events, but that we should have more confidence in using the human means at our disposal.

We must never forget that to be close to God, even when He appears to be asleep, is to be safe. When we’re confused or going through unpleasant times, God does not forget us. St. Teresa of Ávila said, “He never fails his friends” (Teresa of Ávila, Life, 2,4).

I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

JM