Matthew 10:26-33, 12th Sunday In Ordinary Time

Twice in today’s Gospel, Jesus speaks of his “heavenly Father. Whenever we make the sign of the cross, we begin with “in the name of the Father,” so that we don’t find anything strange with calling God our Father.
But the Fatherhood of God has come under fire with the rise of feminism. If we know that God is pure spirit who transcends male and female, masculine and feminine, why preserve what some believe to be the antiquated, patriarchal practice of referring to the divinity as “Father”?

 What does it mean to call God “Father?”

 Most of the great religions of the world believe in one God and teach the gist of the Ten Commandments. But that the supreme Being is not just “King of the Universe” or “Master” but “Father,” that he desires that we have a close, familiar relationship with Him – these ideas you don’t find anywhere outside the teaching of Jesus.

 To call God “Father” does not mean to say, of course, that he is an old man with a white beard. Only the second person of the Blessed Trinity accepted a male human nature in the womb of Mary. The Father and the Holy Spirit are pure Spirit and transcend male and female, masculine and feminine, as the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches (CCC 239).

 This is no new insight brought to Christianity by the feminist movement. It has always been taught that the word “Father” applied to God, is used by way of analogy. Analogies tell us something very true despite being imperfect. Until recently, the father was recognized by Western society as origin, head and provider of the family. To call the first person of the Trinity “Father” means that he is the origin and transcendent authority of all and cares for the needs of all.

 But we all instinctively know that a father who just pays the bills and barks orders is not enough. We expect a dad to have an intimate, affectionate relationship with his children, to spend “quality time” with them. To call God “Father” means, then, that he is near to us, intimately concerned with us, fond of us, even crazy about us. He is not the aloof God of the philosophers who created the world to run by virtue of its own natural laws so that he could withdraw and occupy himself with more interesting things.

 No, the God whom Jesus calls Father cares about us and knows us intimately. “Every hair on your head is numbered,” Jesus reminds us today. He loves us more than we love ourselves and knows us better than we know ourselves.

 Now, this does not mean that He makes all things go smoothly for us. He loves us so much that He made us in His image and likeness, which means He made us free. And through the free choice of the first man, evil and death were invited into our world. He does not shield us from all the troublesome consequences of this “original sin” which each of us, sadly, has ratified with our own personal sin. But He sent us prophets, like Jeremiah, as we heard in the first reading, to wake us up and warn us of the horrible consequences of disobedience. And finally He sent his Son to be a new Adam, as St, Paul wrote in his letter to the Romans, to pay the price of that disobedience and give the human race an undeserved new start.

 But God the Father will not shelter us from problems and challenges, as He did not shelter Jeremiah or His Son Jesus from it. A good father doesn’t protect his children forever from the harsh realities of life, but helps them as they progress through various stages of development to face the challenges and grow through the difficulties. Scripture says that even Jesus learned obedience through what he suffered (Heb. 5:8-9). How much more do we need to learn and mature, and some learning can only take place through suffering.

 So, as a true Father, He loves us too much to take us out of the conflict. But there’s one thing we can be sure of – He will never leave us to fight our battles alone.

 So, when problems come our way, when suffering tempts us to doubt that God is a real Father, let us remind ourselves of these truths and continue to trust our Father in heaven.