While our faith sharing group was meditating on the “Our Father” Jim became very agitated and blurted out that he could probably love Jesus, but had no use for the Father. We listened to Jim’s pain and encouraged him to slowly pray with the “Our Father” during the following week. At our next gathering Jim joyfully announced that he had been adopted… He explained that memories of his own father had surfaced as he prayed: His dad’s frequent admissions into psychiatric institutions, his inability to show affection and his eventual suicide. As Jim had explored additional Scriptures about God, the Father, these words had leapt out at him. “You received a spirit of adoption, through which we cry, Abba, ‘Father!’” (Romans 8:15). Jim felt healed, nurtured and accepted from head to toe. Since then he prefers to pray to his “Father-God”.
The Father’s Gift. Jim’s ability to place his broken life before the Father was a gift. Our Father freely shares such healing gifts and is always faithful to an everlasting covenant love. Each of us can go deeper in this love and truly say that the Father of Abraham, Moses, David and Jesus is my Father as well. We can rely on this remarkable Father-God who creates and personally sustains billions of children. This is an important truth to remember when we feel like orphans, who are abandoned, or lacking moral leadership from the government, or feeling overwhelmed by life-threatening tragedies.
The Father’s Strength: Our Father is intimately involved in every breath, all or our movements, our thoughts, our relationships. It is through the Father’s love that our inner self grows strong and capable of love. Each of us is given God’s Spirit, who helps us cry out in time of trouble, like Jesus during the anguish of the cross (Psalms 22). Jim was not only healed, but received help in loving his own small children. St. Paul’s prayer in Ephesians describes what can happen. May God “grant you in accord with the riches of his glory… that you (be) rooted and grounded in love” (Ephesians 3:17).
The Father’s Blessing. Encountering the Father also involves allowing the Father’s gentle, but persistent, strength to draws us into a spiritual family, so we can grow alongside Jesus, our brother. It is here that we grow and discover the particular gifts that our Creator has given us. In times of pandemic, when it is not possible to receive the Eucharist together, you can imagine yourself on the day of your Baptism. Then picture God, the Father, hovering over you, or cradling you, and smiling as you are filled with new life again and again. And remember: the whole timeless communion of saints is always gathered around you also.
Journey to the Father. Every time you get in the car or go for a walk, even if your trip is just to a supermarket, remember that you are part of a people on a journey toward the Father through the grace and strength of the Spirit. And together, with every step of this journey, we are all meant to be swept up into the relationships between Father, Son and Spirit. The result is a burning hunger for sharing this journey with all God’s children, the way Mary did, by bringing Jesus into the world. Through her we know that ultimately; corruption, death, sickness and evil have no place in our Father’s house. So, we tell others about this journey, this inheritance, especially those in need.
Father, I abandon myself into your hands; do with me what you will… for I love you, Lord, and so need to give myself into your hands without reserve, and with boundless confidence, for you are my Father. Blessed Charles de Foucauld (1858-1916)