TRUSTING IN THE FATHER

God is by his very nature a father. Being a father, God is also fatherly.

Sanskrit (classical Old Indiec literary language) has a word which refers to both father and mother. The word is pitaru. According to that language, God is pitaru; he is father and mother. All the great and trustworthy things which children see or seek, they find in God the Father.

The prime motive for all divine activity is God's fatherly love. There are also secondary motives, such as God's justice and God's creative will, but the prime motive is God's will to communicate himself; that is, to love. This love is so creative that it moves God's justice and his formative will.

God the Father may also hurt us. He is a just God, but his justice is always moved by his mercy, by his fatherly love. In whatever God does, his prime motive is always love.

By manifesting his love, God wants to draw us to himself. It is in this light that we should view the Incarnation and the Crucifixion. It is in this light that we should understand the great number of favors God has lavished upon us. Through visible signs of love, the heavenly Father wants to bind our love to himself. This reveals the infinite and omnipotent God as a brilliant educator.

We should foster within ourselves the firm belief in the profound truth that the great personal God surrounding us is a supremely great, a supremely kind, and a supremely faithful power. We recognize in God the Father all the qualities that children would presuppose in their parents. Therefore, we should frequently meditate on God's attributes, such as his might, love, and faithfulness.

How does it affect me when I say, “My Father! God, the Almighty, the All-merciful, the All-wise is my Father? Our Father...” If only I were really convinced of it, for then the words, “my Father,” would mean that everything planned and carried out by this Father is always an expression of his fatherliness... God is a father, God is good; everything he does is good.

What is the true image of God like? It is the image of a father, of God the Father, the God of love, who, nevertheless, can, will, and even must impose severe demands on his children so that they will increasingly resemble his only-begotten Son.

In the light of faith I perceive the Father's hands even in the heavy blows of fate.

No one loves us more tenderly and deeply than the Father. This is also and particularly true when we cannot understand his love. Can the Father show greater love than when he helps his children to become like his only-begotten Son, who hangs on the cross? He only does this to his favorite children.

If I want to say my enlightened, childlike yes, I must listen for the personal, fatherly yes of the heavenly Father.

Christ does not tire of impressing upon his followers the great truth that God, out of a deep fatherliness, cares not only for the world at large, not only for a specific nation, but also for each and every individual person. This concept is contrary to that of the Old Testament. To be sure, in its golden age, the people of the Old Testament believed that Yahweh bestowed his fatherly love upon the Israelite nation, but not upon the individual person.

Christ frequently stresses the fact that God the Father extends his fatherly care to each individual, even in the smallest matters.

The Father cares for the lilies in the field and the birds in the air. How much more he is concerned about each individual human being! Christ often chooses images which, at first sight, are difficult to grasp. Just think of the image of the prodigal son, the lost drachma, and the lost sheep. What does Christ want to teach us? He wants to fill our concept of “father” with everything that is great and noble in heaven and on earth.

If I want to be a child, everything depends on my conviction that God's wisdom and providence stand behind all happenings.

A simple child does not walk alone through the dark gate of death. A child overcomes everything with confidence.

As long as God the Father is with me, I need not fear. The party that has God as an ally is always the strongest.

The more unconditional my confidence in the Father is, the more freely he bestows his fatherly love upon me.

One of the greatest mistakes is to distrust God's goodness.

Our greatest concern every second of our lives should be to become infinitely carefree. This carefreeness is born of confidence in God, not of carelessness.

What a masterstroke it is to recognize at all times and behind all things the Author of all, God the Father with his guidance, his mercy, his special fatherly love.

Heroic confidence grows only when the Holy Spirit enkindles in us the spirit of childlikeness.

Then, we possess an invincible confidence in the power, kindness, and faithfulness of the heavenly Father.

I can draw God's graces and favors upon myself to the extent that I remain a child of confidence, that I become a child of humility, and that I am a child of thanksgiving.

It is true that our prayer will be heard depending on the degree of our confidence and that - as the saints tell us in keeping with Holy Scripture - we can never direct enough requests to our partner of love. Yet this always presupposes that our souls remain childlike, simple, and detached from ourselves. Evidently, we deal here with a masterstroke of the saints which we are unable to imitate overnight. Not everyone is able to interpret Christ's words correctly and to apply them meaningfully: “Anyone who does not welcome the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it” (Lk 18:17).

A humble person follows the principle: Overcome all confidence in your own power; learn to trust heroically in the merciful love of the Father. The miracle of humility and the miracle of confidence are interdependent.

We suffer most because of our moral weaknesses. We suffer most because we are frequently so cold, so indifferent in spiritual matters, and we live as though there were no God, no Father in heaven. What is the reason for this? It is always the same thought: we should rely on him. We should grow in the awareness of being unable to overcome our moral, religious weaknesses unless we trust unconditionally in the merciful love of God the Father.

We should be and remain helpless in every direction. Why? The realization that we are not self-sufficient, that we cannot exist by ourselves should become second nature to us. In our very existence we are dependent on God the Father. When we lose him, we lose all. For the perfection and integration of our nature, we are absolutely dependent on his infinitely merciful love, on his fatherly love.

By being insignificant, by being small, by acknowledging our weaknesses, limitations and faults, we draw the eyes of the merciful Father upon us in a unique manner.

Why should we glory in our weakness? Our weakness moves God to bestow his merciful love upon us in a boundless measure. However, I may rejoice in my weakness only because my powerlessness, so to speak, compels the omnipotence and goodness of the Father to descend upon me and to enter my life.

Why did God allow sin... my personal weaknesses? Because “Christ meant to make me the greatest evidence of his inexhaustible patience” (1 Tim 1:16), because I should become convinced that everything, absolutely everything in my life is a gift of the Father's merciful love: my natural talents, my supernatural endowment, the fruitfulness of my life.