Our Bold Claim

As Christians, we make a very bold claim. We claim that God is our Father. We claim that the One who created the universe with all its billions of people knows each of us individually and loves us personally. We claim that He formed each of us in our mother’s womb with the care of a sculptor molding clay. There is not one second of our lives that we go unnoticed by Him. Despite all the world’s problems, He has nothing better to do than care for us.  We do not claim that He is like a father, but that He really is our Father in a way that our human fathers can never be. Therefore, we can bring our cares and concerns to Him. We can count on Him to help us through any difficulty. We can be assured that we are never alone. God, our Heavenly Father, is always by our side sustaining us with an unconditional love.

We make another bold claim - that this love of God became visible in the person of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. This Jesus who lived in history was no mere teacher or prophet. Rather, He is the eternal Son of God come down to earth, taking on our human nature, to reveal the love of God. In Jesus, we are able to see and touch God. In his encyclical, God is Love, Pope Benedict writes: “No one has ever seen God as he is. And yet God is not totally invisible to us; he does not remain completely inaccessible.... In Jesus we are able to see the Father.” The love of God, therefore, is no mere feeling or lofty ideal. It is a person, the person of Jesus Christ, who shows the Father’s love by offering His life on the cross for us and by rising from the dead to give us the hope of everlasting life.

If all that were not enough, as Christians we claim another great dignity - that the Father and the Son are alive and active in us and among us through the person of the Holy Spirit. Like the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit is the one eternal God. At the beginning of creation, He was breathed into Adam to give him life. He was present throughout the Old Testament through the prophets of Israel. He was at work in the life of Jesus and raised Him from the dead. Then He was poured out upon the apostles at Pentecost to continue the saving work of Jesus in the world through the centuries. That Holy Spirit now lives within all the baptized, reminding us of our dignity as daughters and sons of God, inspiring us to do good works and strengthening us to live and witness to our faith. The Holy Spirit is the presence and love of God made visible in us through baptism.

The mystery of the Most Holy Trinity comes down to this - God is a family. He is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It is the nature of God that He is love and that His love becomes real in the persons of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Because His love is so great and overflowing, God invites us to become a part of that family. We are rescued from a life of sin and death through adoption into God’s family. And we enter into this family through baptism in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

We are sons and daughters of God called to an intimate and personal relationship with the Father, in the Son and through the Holy Spirit. It is so beyond our ability to comprehend that the only appropriate response is awe and gratitude for such a tremendous gift. 

Our Heavenly Father

It was a tense and awkward situation.

Popular Catholic writer and theologian, Scott Hahn, was meeting with a Muslim imam to prepare an interfaith prayer service. In the course of their discussions, Mr. Hahn referred to God as “Father”. This offended the imam who immediately asked him to stop referring to the Lord in such a familiar and intimate way. Mr. Hahn apologized explaining that he did not mean to offend him but that it was typical of Christians to call God “Father” after the example of Jesus.

As their conversation continued, Mr. Hahn found himself, without thinking, referring to God as Father again. Again, the imam asked him to stop and again Mr. Hahn apologized saying that he was not doing it on purpose but that it was second nature for him and for all Christians to refer to God as Father.

Though it was an uncomfortable discussion, it taught him a lesson we often can forget as Christians. Jesus has taught us to call God “our Father”. After the example of our Savior, we understand God not to be a being who is distant and indifferent but a Father who knows us and loves us. For the people of Jesus’ day and for many people still in our day, such an intimate and personal idea of God can be shocking or ridiculous. But it is what we profess as Christians, it is the prayer that is on our lips every day - God is “our Father”.

When Jesus tells us to call God “our Father” in the prayer He teaches the disciples and which we have come to call the “Our Father” or the “Lord’s Prayer”, He has two specific meanings in mind. First, He teaches us that God our Father wants to provide for all our needs and, secondly, that He wants to forgive us.

First, our Heavenly Father wants to provide for all our needs. In the prayer that Jesus left us, we say, “Give us this day our daily bread.” We turn to God and place our needs before Him confident that He will hear and answer us.

In today’s gospel, Jesus uses the example of earthly fathers. What good man would fail to give his son food when he is hungry or comfort his daughter when she has fallen and hurt herself? Just so, we can expect God to provide for us when we are needy or hurting. No matter what difficulties we are facing, our Heavenly Father cares for us enough to give us what we require to get through it.

How do we tap into God’s power to provide for all our needs? Simply by asking, seeking and knocking. If we ask, we will receive, if we seek, we will find, if we knock, it will be opened for us. If our Heavenly Father does not answer us right away, then we must persist in our prayer with confidence.

As we listen to Jesus’ words, it is natural for us to ask, “If God loves us so much, why does He not always answer us right away? Why do we so often have to ask more than once?” There are several reasons. First of all, what we are asking for might not be good for us. Just as we do not give our children everything they ask for because it might hurt them, so God does not grant all our prayers because, though what we ask for may seem good or desirable, it may not be what is best for us. Secondly, God wants to increase our desire for what He wants to give us by making us wait for it. That way, when we do receive it, we will be that much more grateful for it and less likely to take it for granted. Thirdly, God waits before answering our prayers to teach us that He grants our prayers out of His love for us and not because we deserve it. If He were to answer us immediately, we might believe that our prayers work like magic incantations, compelling God to give us what we ask for. Rather, He wants us to understand that what he provides for us comes from His great love rather than because of anything we have done.

By calling God, “Father”, Jesus is teaching us not only that He provides for our needs but that He loves us enough to forgive us. Our sin offends God. By breaking His commandments, we tell our Heavenly Father that we know better than He does what is good for us. We tell Him that we want to live by our own rules, not by His. If God did not love us, He would not care what we do. But, because He knows what is best for us and because He does not want to see us hurt ourselves, He gives us commandments to guide our actions and is hurt when we break them.

Because of this we pray, “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Our Heavenly Father is willing to forgive us when we ask for Him to. Like every other good thing He gives us, we merely need to ask, seek and knock for mercy to be shown us. And, we also need to be willing to forgive those who offend us. If He offers us His mercy and we fail to share it with others, then that forgiveness will be denied us. Even so, we can always go back to Him for a fresh start. As our Holy Father, Pope Francis, said so beautifully in one of his first homilies as Bishop of Rome, “God never tires of forgiving us. It is we who often grow tired of asking for His forgiveness.”

At this Mass, we turn to our Father bringing our needs before Him and celebrating the love and forgiveness that He has taught us through Jesus Christ. This is an intimate and personal gathering where we meet God not in fear, not in guilt and not in shame but in love, mercy and joy. How blessed we are to know that our Heavenly Father loves us. It is now our duty to share that love and forgiveness with others so that they can join us in this family where God is our Father, Jesus is our brother and the Holy Spirit binds us all in unconditional love.

We Dare To Call God, Father

As Christians, we make a very bold claim. We claim that God is our Father. We claim that the One who created the universe with all its billions of people knows each of us individually and loves us personally. We claim that He formed each of us in our mother’s womb with the care of a sculptor molding clay. There is not one second of our lives that we go unnoticed by Him. Despite all the world’s problems, He has nothing better to do than care for us.  We do not claim that He is like a father, but that He really is our Father in a way that our human fathers can never be. Therefore, we can bring our cares and concerns to Him. We can count on Him to help us through any difficulty. We can be assured that we are never alone. God, our Heavenly Father, is always by our side sustaining us with an unconditional love.

We make another bold claim - that this love of God became visible in the person of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. This Jesus who lived in history was no mere teacher or prophet. Rather, He is the eternal Son of God come down to earth, taking on our human nature, to reveal the love of God. In Jesus, we are able to see and touch God. In his encyclical, God is Love, Pope Benedict writes: “No one has ever seen God as he is. And yet God is not totally invisible to us; he does not remain completely inaccessible.... In Jesus we are able to see the Father.” The love of God, therefore, is no mere feeling or lofty ideal. It is a person, the person of Jesus Christ, who shows the Father’s love by offering His life on the cross for us and by rising from the dead to give us the hope of everlasting life.

If all that were not enough, as Christians we claim another great dignity - that the Father and the Son are alive and active in us and among us through the person of the Holy Spirit. Like the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit is the one eternal God. At the beginning of creation, He was breathed into Adam to give him life. He was present throughout the Old Testament through the prophets of Israel. He was at work in the life of Jesus and raised Him from the dead. Then He was poured out upon the apostles at Pentecost to continue the saving work of Jesus in the world through the centuries. That Holy Spirit now lives within all the baptized, reminding us of our dignity as daughters and sons of God, inspiring us to do good works and strengthening us to live and witness to our faith. The Holy Spirit is the presence and love of God made visible in us through baptism.

The mystery of the Most Holy Trinity comes down to this - God is a family. He is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It is the nature of God that He is love and that His love becomes real in the persons of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Because His love is so great and overflowing, God invites us to become a part of that family. Just as Maureen was saved from a life of poverty and abuse in Vietnam by being adopted into a loving family, so we are rescued from a life of sin and death through adoption into God’s family. And we enter into this family through baptism in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

We are sons and daughters of God called to an intimate and personal relationship with the Father, in the Son and through the Holy Spirit. It is so beyond our ability to comprehend that the only appropriate response is awe and gratitude for such a tremendous gift.

Our Heavenly Father Provides

Life is full of uncertainty. We do our best to plan for the future. We try to prepare for whatever may happen and save as much as we can. However, so many things can change in life that we cannot always be on top of everything. Besides the economic uncertainties, there are also political changes, changes to our health and changes in our relationships. That is why, as we grow older and wiser, we learn to take one day at a time, enjoying what we have today and trusting that we will have enough for tomorrow.

With all the change in life, there is one thing that stays constant - God. God never changes. He is always by our side. No matter what may happen, He will always love us. There is nothing and no one that can change His love for us. There is nothing that can distract Him from us. He has us securely in His hands.

The prophet Isaiah writes beautifully about this in today's first reading. God is the potter, and we are the clay He molds and fashions. We sometimes think that God was done creating when He formed Adam and Eve out of the mud and rested on the Sabbath day. However, God is still at work creating us. We are all works in progress. God is not finished with us yet. And so we need not look to the future with fear because we are in the capable hands of our Creator. Whatever may happen, He will give us what we need to face it all. He will make sure that everything turns out for our benefit no matter how difficult the trials may be.

Saint Paul continues this theme in his letter to the Corinthians. Not only is God at work creating us but He is also saving us in Christ. Through Jesus' death on the cross and through faith, God is enriching us with gifts of grace. To take the image of God as a potter, not only does God create us as a potter would create a jug out of clay, but He also fills us. He does not leave us empty but pours out His love, mercy, peace and joy into us. Paul continues to explain that we lack no spiritual gifts as we look forward in hope to the future. Furthermore, Paul explains, God is faithful. He will never get so frustrated with us that He gives up on us. Rather He will work on us so that we will be ready to greet Him when He comes again.

Despite all the uncertainties of the future, despite our inability to plan for every and any eventuality, we can look forward with hope and confidence. Our health may fail, our money may run out, we might even lose our loved ones but God will always be with us. With God by our side we can lack for nothing. He will always provide for us.

And though we are not able to see into the future, God is able to. In ways we may not be aware of, He is already preparing us for what is to come. Through the small obstacles we overcome today, He is training us for the larger obstacles that will come our way tomorrow. By putting us through small tests today, He is schooling us in the patience, strength and confidence we will need for the larger tests tomorrow. That is why, though our first reaction may be to complain to God about the challenges we face,  we really should be thanking Him for equipping us with what we need to succeed in the future.

So as we look forward in life, our confidence is not in ourselves, in how much money we have saved or how well we have prepared. Instead our confidence is in the God who holds us in His loving hands and who makes all things work together for our good.

There is one thing about the future that we can be absolutely certain of. Jesus will come again. We do not know when He will come, but He has made it clear that the world will one day end and He will establish the Kingdom of God once and for all. In the meanwhile, He has left us His word, the Bible, to teach us how to live as we await His return in glory. There is no better preparation for the future than living a good and virtuous life. When we look back at our past and the mistakes we have made, how often were they a result not just of bad planning but of bad choices?  We knew what the right thing to do was, but for some reason we chose to do what we knew was wrong thinking that we could get away with it. As a result, we lost our way.  If we want to be prepared for the future, then, we must strive today to live the words of the Scripture and to follow the teaching of the Church. They will keep us safe and on the right path as we navigate our way through all the dangers of life.

Life is a journey. We do not always see what is ahead of us. We cannot always plan for what is waiting for us down the road. But we have a God who does see ahead and who will give us all we need to travel securely. We need only trust Him and follow the path He has marked out for us as we look forward to our final destination, the eternal life of heaven.

As we gather here today, God also provides us with the food to sustain us along the way. It is the Body and Blood of His Son which is given to us out of love. Whatever difficulties we are facing, whatever uncertainties are weighing on us, let us offer them up to our Heavenly Father. And when we receive the Eucharist, let us be reminded that He loves us and that He will see us through. We are the clay in His hands and He will never let us go.

A Loving Father

It was a tense and awkward situation.

Popular Catholic writer and theologian, Scott Hahn, was meeting with a Muslim imam to prepare an interfaith prayer service. In the course of their discussions, Mr. Hahn referred to God as “Father”. This offended the imam who immediately asked him to stop referring to the Lord in such a familiar and intimate way. Mr. Hahn apologized explaining that he did not mean to offend him but that it was typical of Christians to call God “Father” after the example of Jesus.

As their conversation continued, Mr. Hahn found himself, without thinking, referring to God as Father again. Again, the imam asked him to stop and again Mr. Hahn apologized saying that he was not doing it on purpose but that it was second nature for him and for all Christians to refer to God as Father.

Though it was an uncomfortable discussion, it taught him a lesson we often can forget as Christians. Jesus has taught us to call God “our Father”. After the example of our Savior, we understand God not to be a being who is distant and indifferent but a Father who knows us and loves us. For the people of Jesus’ day and for many people still in our day, such an intimate and personal idea of God can be shocking or ridiculous. But it is what we profess as Christians, it is the prayer that is on our lips every day - God is “our Father”.

When Jesus tells us to call God “our Father” in the prayer He teaches the disciples and which we have come to call the “Our Father” or the “Lord’s Prayer”, He has two specific meanings in mind. First, He teaches us that God our Father wants to provide for all our needs and, secondly, that He wants to forgive us.

First, our Heavenly Father wants to provide for all our needs. In the prayer that Jesus left us, we say, “Give us this day our daily bread.” We turn to God and place our needs before Him confident that He will hear and answer us.

In today’s gospel, Jesus uses the example of earthly fathers. What good man would fail to give his son food when he is hungry or comfort his daughter when she has fallen and hurt herself? Just so, we can expect God to provide for us when we are needy or hurting. No matter what difficulties we are facing, our Heavenly Father cares for us enough to give us what we require to get through it.

How do we tap into God’s power to provide for all our needs? Simply by asking, seeking and knocking. If we ask, we will receive, if we seek, we will find, if we knock, it will be opened for us. If our Heavenly Father does not answer us right away, then we must persist in our prayer with confidence.

As we listen to Jesus’ words, it is natural for us to ask, “If God loves us so much, why does He not always answer us right away? Why do we so often have to ask more than once?” There are several reasons. First of all, what we are asking for might not be good for us. Just as we do not give our children everything they ask for because it might hurt them, so God does not grant all our prayers because, though what we ask for may seem good or desirable, it may not be what is best for us. Secondly, God wants to increase our desire for what He wants to give us by making us wait for it. That way, when we do receive it, we will be that much more grateful for it and less likely to take it for granted. Thirdly, God waits before answering our prayers to teach us that He grants our prayers out of His love for us and not because we deserve it. If He were to answer us immediately, we might believe that our prayers work like magic incantations, compelling God to give us what we ask for. Rather, He wants us to understand that what he provides for us comes from His great love rather than because of anything we have done.

By calling God, “Father”, Jesus is teaching us not only that He provides for our needs but that He loves us enough to forgive us. Our sin offends God. By breaking His commandments, we tell our Heavenly Father that we know better than He does what is good for us. We tell Him that we want to live by our own rules, not by His. If God did not love us, He would not care what we do. But, because He knows what is best for us and because He does not want to see us hurt ourselves, He gives us commandments to guide our actions and is hurt when we break them.

Because of this we pray, “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Our Heavenly Father is willing to forgive us when we ask for Him to. Like every other good thing He gives us, we merely need to ask, seek and knock for mercy to be shown us. And, we also need to be willing to forgive those who offend us. If He offers us His mercy and we fail to share it with others, then that forgiveness will be denied us. Even so, we can always go back to Him for a fresh start. As our Holy Father, Pope Francis, said so beautifully in one of his first homilies as Bishop of Rome, “God never tires of forgiving us. It is we who often grow tired of asking for His forgiveness.”

At this Mass, we turn to our Father bringing our needs before Him and celebrating the love and forgiveness that He has taught us through Jesus Christ. This is an intimate and personal gathering where we meet God not in fear, not in guilt and not in shame but in love, mercy and joy. How blessed we are to know that our Heavenly Father loves us. It is now our duty to share that love and forgiveness with others so that they can join us in this family where God is our Father, Jesus is our brother and the Holy Spirit binds us all in unconditional love.