What Kind of Father?
February 21, 2024
Fr. John Riccardo
“Brothers and sisters, if God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own son but handed him over for us all, how will he not also give us everything else along with him? Who will bring a charge against God's chosen ones? It is God who acquits us, who will condemn. Christ Jesus it is, who died, or rather was raised, who also is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us.”
Romans 8: 31b - 34
I could never believe in a God who would crucify his own son. A very popular television talk show host from decades past said that. I remember hearing those words as if he said them this morning.
Clearly, he didn't quite grasp the essence of what was going on in the life of Jesus in general and on the cross in particular. His words come to mind, though, as we hear Paul tell us that God did not spare his own son. How about your image of God the Father?
How about mine?
What is it?
Where did that image come from?
Various Christian leaders have spoken worse words than our misguided talk show host. As one recent author puts it, “ever since the 17th century, and well indeed into the 20th, a trend arose among theologians and preachers to portray God the Father as a celestial child abuser vis a vis Christ crucified. As someone who unleashes violent fury on his son for sins of which his son is innocent, such a portrayal of the Father gained a foothold in Catholic circles under the influence of Jansenism.”
An example is then given from a sermon by a French bishop who preached, “God the Father beholds him, that is, Jesus, as a sinner and advances upon him with all the resources of his justice. I see only an irritated God. The man, Jesus, has been thrown under the multipole and redoubled blows of divine vengeance as it vented itself so his, that is the Father's, anger diminished. This is what passed on the cross until the Son of God read in the eyes of His Father that He was fully appeased. When an avenging God waged war upon his son, the mystery of our peace is accomplished.”
Modern worship songs, like In Christ Alone, reinforce a twisted understanding of the Father. There we find and sing the words, “ 'Til on that cross, as Jesus died, the wrath of God was satisfied.” Such preaching, and such singing, hardly lend themselves to a healthy vision of God the Father. How many of us fall prey to the heretical mindset that the God of the Old Testament is a God of wrath and anger, and the God of the New Testament is a softer, gentler deity?
How many wrongly think of the Father as the distant, angry, and harsh person of the Trinity, and the Son as the kind and loving One who ceaselessly prevents His Father from smiting us. Jesus, however, reveals to us who the Father is. John says, no one has ever seen God. The only God who is at the Father's side has made Him known. John 1:18.
From the original Greek, we could say that Jesus describes or explains the Father. Jesus tells us, he who sees me sees the one who sent me, John 12:45. And he who has seen me has seen the Father, John 14:9. The same Paul who wrote Romans says to the Colossians that Jesus is the image of the invisible God, Colossians 1:15.
And when St. John writes, God is love, 1 John 4:8, he means God the Father is love. Not that Jesus and the Holy Spirit don't love or aren't love, but rather that there is an order, if you will, to love, a kind of sacred hierarchy. The work of the Passion is a Trinitarian work, that is to say, all the persons of the Trinity are involved, just in diverse ways.
Jesus willingly embraces sin out of love for us, and the Father willingly shares His Son with us so that we might partake of His own divine life. The Spirit helps us to understand all that is taking place in these universe-saving and shaking mysteries we are preparing to celebrate at the end of Lent.
The same Spirit dwells within us.
Earlier, in the same letter to the Romans, Paul told us you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the spirit of adoption as sons by whom we cry, Abba, Father, Romans 8:15. So let us ask the Spirit to help us know the Father in these Lenten days like never before.
Let us ask Him to expose and to heal any and every distorted image of the Father lurking in us. Let us ask Him to help us understand what Jesus is doing for us on the cross and let us ask Him to help us to live evermore as grateful and loyal sons and daughters.
ACTS XXIX Prayer Intentions
February 2024
For God’s protection upon Fr. John, our team and our families.
For the ordained and lay leaders who will be joining us for a Leadership Immersive on our campus.
For missions in Indiana and Florida State University.
For all those running The Rescue Project in parishes and homes across the world.
For the grace to be attentive to the Holy Spirit.