FATHERHOOD

FATHERHOOD

 

No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him. John 1:18

Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect. Matt 5:48

Therefore the Jews sought the more to kill him, because he not only had broken the sabbath, but said also that God was his Father, making himself equal with God. Then answered Jesus and said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise. John 5:18-19

In nature where the sun shines on the good and on the bad, where wheat ripens and grows golden to give bread to Jew and heathen, where the stars shine on the shepherd's cabin and the murderer's prison; where grape clusters turn purple and swell to give wine to the wedding banquet and to the orgies of as­sassins; where the birds of the air freely singing find their food without fatigue, where thieving foxes also have their refuge and the lilies of the field are clad in more splendor than kings, (Matt. 5:45) Jesus found the earthly confirmation of His eternal certainty that God is not a Master who punishes one day of enjoyment by a thousand years of reproach, nor a fierce war-like Jehovah who commands the extermination of enemies, nor a kind of grand sultan who delights in being served by satraps of high lineage and keeps close watch that his servants execute to the last detail the rigorous ritualistic etiquette of that Regia Curia, which is the Temple.

 As a Son, Christ knew that God is Father: Father of all mankind and not only of the people of Abraham. The love of a husband is strong but carnal and jealous. The love of a brother is often poisoned with envy; that of a son stained with rebellion; that of a friend spotted with deceit; that of a mas­ter swollen with condescending pride; only the love of a father towards his children is perfect love, pure, disinterested love. The father does for his son what he would do for no one else. His son is his creation, flesh of his flesh and of his bone, grown up by his side day by day, a completion and a complement of his own being. The old man lives again in the young man. The past sees itself in the future. He who has lived sacrifices himself for him who is to live. The father lives in the son, and feels himself exalted. This child was born to him in a moment of passion in the arms of the woman chosen from among all other women, born through the divine anguish of this woman, cared for and preserved by his own tears and sweat. He has seen him grow up at his feet, he has warmed his cold little hands between his own, and he has heard his first words, eternal miracle ever new! He has seen his first wavering footsteps on the floor of his house. Little by little, he has seen a soul shine out in that body created by him, a new human soul, unique treasure beyond price! Little by little on that face he has seen his own features and those of the child's mother, of that woman with whom only in this common fruit is he corporeally identified. A human couple who long to become one body through love, attain this unity only in a child. In the presence of this new being, his creation, he feels himself a creator, be­neficent, powerful, happy. Because the son looks to his father for everything, and in his childhood has faith only in his father, feels safe only near his father, his father knows that he must live for him, suffer for him, and work for him. (A father is a God on earth for a son, and a son is almost a God for the father.)

 In the love of a father there is no trace of a brother's dutiful sense of duty, no trace of a friend's self-interest and rivalry, of a lover's lustful desire, a servant's pretense of faith­fulness.

 The love of a father is pure love, the only true love, the only love rightly to be called love. Purged of any elements foreign to its essence, it is the happiness of sacrificing oneself for the happiness of others.

 This idea of God as Father, which is one of the great new ideas of the gospel of Christ, this profoundly renovating idea that God is Father and loves us as a father loves his children, not as a king loves his slaves; and gives daily bread to all his children and has a loving welcome even for those who sin if only they return to lean their heads upon his breast: this idea which closes the epoch of the old covenant and marks the be­ginning of the new covenant, Jesus found in nature. As Son of God and one with the Father, He had always been conscious of this paternity scarcely glimpsed by the most luminous of the prophets. But now sharing all human experience He saw it re­flected and as it were revealed in the universe and He was to use the most beautiful images of the natural world to transmit to men the first of His joyful messages.