Calling God ‘Father’:
Key to Christian identity and mission
By Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted
The Catholic Sun
Part One
Have you noticed that Jesus repeatedly addressed His disciples
as “children”? Allow me to recall a few examples from
the writings of the New Testament.
After a rich young man rejected Jesus’ invitation to follow
Him and went away sad, Jesus turned to His disciples and said (Mk
10:24f), “Children, how hard it is to enter the Kingdom
of God! It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle
than for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” Why
did Jesus call His followers “children” at that moment?
Was there something in the rich young man that was not childlike
and that thereby prompted Jesus to affirm the childlike nature
of His followers?
Notice, too, that at the Last Supper Jesus said to the Apostles
(Jn 13:33f), “My children, I will be with you only
a little while longer… I give you a new commandment: love
one another.”
Why not address them as brothers or comrades? Why does He say, “My
children”?
And why, after the Resurrection when He appeared to the Apostles
as they were fishing along the shores of the Sea of Galilee, did
He address them in the same way, calling out (Jn 21:5) “Children,
have you caught anything?”
Even persecuted Christians are called children
Are these instances just a quirky custom on Jesus’ part?
Is this merely archaic speech, signifying nothing? But if that
were the case, why would the Apostle John write in His First Epistle
(2:18) to followers of Christ facing fierce persecution, “Children,
it is the last hour; and just as you heard that the antichrist
was coming, so now many antichrists have appeared”?
And then, a few verses later, John adds (3:1), “See
what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the
children of God. Yet so we are.”
“Children” is one of Jesus’ favorite titles for His followers,
regardless of their age. He calls us children, not out of a desire to be quaint
but to point to a fundamental truth about our identity in relation to God the
Father. We are children of the Father because He created us, but even more
because He gave us new birth through water and the Holy Spirit in the Sacrament
of Baptism.
In unequivocal language Jesus tells Nicodemus (Jn 3:3,5), “Amen,
amen, I say to you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being
born from above… Amen, amen, I say to you, no one can enter
the kingdom of God without being born of water and the Spirit.”
Jesus tells us to call God “Father”
It is no accident then, and not merely arbitrary, that Christ tells
His followers to call God “Father” when they gather
in prayer (Mt 6:9), “This is how you are to pray:
Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name…”
How we pray expresses both what we believe and who we are. To call
God “Father” in obedience to Christ sets our prayer
on solid footing. It also sets our life and mission in the Kingdom
on a faithful course. On the other hand, to refuse to call God “Father” is
to move out of the Christian tradition and to reject a key component
of our Catholic and Apostolic faith, which is essentially Trinitarian.
In this regard, the “Catechism of the Catholic Church” states
(#234), “The mystery of the Most Holy Trinity is the
central mystery of Christian faith and life. It is the mystery
of God in Himself. It is therefore the source of all the other
mysteries of faith, the light that enlightens them. It is the most
fundamental and essential teaching in the ‘hierarchy of the
truths of faith.’ The whole history of salvation is identical
with the history of the way and the means by which the one true
God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, reveals Himself to men and reconciles
and unites with Himself those who turn away from sin.”
Christ gives us Mary as our Mother
God’s tenderness and mercy can certainly be expressed in
motherly images. We find these employed at times in the Sacred
Scriptures themselves. For example, the Lord says in Isaiah 66:13, “As
a mother comforts her son, so will I comfort you.” And Jesus
Himself said to the people of Jerusalem (Lk 13:34), “How
many times I yearned to gather your children together as a hen
gathers her brood under her wings.” These metaphors
express the loving intimacy that our God desires with each of us.
At the same time, never does the Lord ask us to call Him “Mother.” Instead,
Christ invites us to use that title for the Virgin Mary. He directs
us, from the Cross, to look upon His own mother as our mother too,
(Jn 19:27), “Then He said to the disciple, ‘Behold,
your mother.’” Throughout her history, the
Church has accepted this great gift of Jesus with gratitude and
frequently invoked the assistance of the Virgin Mary in prayer.
At the Second Vatican Council, she was officially declared to be
Mother of the Church.
It is important to remember that Christians do not call God “Father” on
the basis of human experience, although our experience may at times
help us to appreciate the fatherhood of God. But we are not projecting
our self-made images upon the Lord. As the catechism says (#239), “God
transcends the human distinction between the sexes. He is neither
man nor woman; He is God. He also transcends human fatherhood and
motherhood, although He is their origin and standard: no one is
father as God is Father.”
The catechism goes on to say (#240), “Jesus revealed
that God is Father in an unheard-of sense: He is Father not only
in being Creator; He is eternally Father in relation to His only
Son, who is eternally Son only in relation to His Father: ‘No
one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father
except the Son and any one to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him’ (Mt
11:27).”
In telling us to call God “Father” and in calling His
own disciples “children” Jesus is teaching us fundamental
truths about both the mystery of God and the mystery of the human
person. He is also beckoning us beyond individualism and foolish
pride. We shall develop the implications of this in Part Two of
this series.
Copyright 2005 The Catholic Sun.
