GOD OUR LOVING FATHER

"Lord teach us to pray"   Jesus answered "When you pray say this  "Our Father, who art in heaven......?   And again Jesus told his disciples "Call no man Father, you have one Father in Heaven.....?     The Father of a family is a very important figure on whom so much depends.   He is the one who is the husband, the protector of his wife, and he has the task of providing for the family with food and housing, and protecting the family from its enemies.   He is the strong one, the one that  children look up to in their lives, and instills love into the family unit.
Yet Jesus is asking us to look at God as the overall Father    Because He is first in the provision of life He knew us as his creation before time began and formed us as an act of Love to know Him, love Him and serve him in this world and to be happy with him forever in the next as the Penny Catechism tells us.   I often ask myself why he thought up me, such an ungrateful and useless creature.  But then He did so because despite my faults there was something He saw in me that was worthwhile, that He loved.   And that is the mystery of God the Father - he loves us so much.   We are his children and he wants us to be happy children happy in our families and happy with those outside our family, caring in our families and caring outside our families.   He wants us all to be one family with one bond of love uniting us.   We know from scripture that God never stops loving us.  If only the person who is in despair, the young who take drugs to leave their unhappiness, those who are contemplating suicide could feel that love.  Yet who can turn their hearts to God, only those who really love God and really care for all his children.    As Catholics we are called to show that love and I can only speak for myself when I say just how useless I am in doing so.   I need to love God so much more if I am to tell others of his love.     God my Father, let me feel your love so that my feebleness can make way fro the strength to love you and all those you have created.  And help me make my own family a wonderful School of Love.

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