What does it mean to call God, Father?
Sunday after Christmas: 28 December, 2003
Fr Neville Connell
Assistant Priest, St Peter's, Eastern Hill
In Christ Church, Hamilton, in the Western Districts, in the Lady
Chapel, there is a window depicting the Holy Family. Our Lady is
in the foreground, with the boy Jesus, perhaps about 12 years old.
In the background is St Joseph at his carpenter's bench – presumably
they were all in his workshop. St Joseph looks wistful,
thoughtful, as if he already had much to think about when he
looked on his wife an her son.
Now because we have, one way and another, all grown up in a family,
we can perhaps identify with the Holy Family to some degree. It is
very important for us to be able to talk of Jesus growing up in what
was an average domestic setting in Nazareth. In Hong Kong we have a
Parish Church of the Holy Carpenter in a working class district,
with a craft workshop attached for workers with wood.
Our Gospel Reading for today, (Luke 2:41-52), takes us to a major stage
in Jesus' life. The occasion for this annual visit to Jerusalem was
probably Jesus' Barmitzvah, when he became a 'Son of the Covenant'.
This is a puberty ceremony, not unlike Confirmation in Christian life,
marking a major transition in a boy's, and these days, girl's life.
But for Jesus, this was also a time of discovery, of revelation. It may
have been the culmination of some time spent in reflection on his
life thus far, and of those closest to him. Or it may have been a
moment of revelation, or both.
It seems certainly to have been the first significant time when Jesus
became aware as to just who he was. "Did you not know that I must be
busy with my Father's affairs?".
In our First Reading, (1 Sam 1:20-22;24-28), the boy Samuel received
his call externally – through his mother lending him to the same Temple
centuries before as an act of thanksgiving for his birth – and later
through the voice of the Lord God calling him at night, and the High
Priest's understanding of the voice.
In Jesus' case, the call, the awareness seems to have come from within,
but we should not rule out the involvement of his Mother Mary in preparing
Jesus for his mission.
This visit to the Temple was for Jesus the beginning of his understanding
of what it meant to call God 'Father'. Sitting in the Temple
with the doctors was straightforward, exciting, exhilarating even. But
as Jesus began his ministry he had many occasions to reflect on his
relationship to God the Father, and the cost – as his teaching brought
antagonism from the religious leaders – in the Garden of Gethsemane, and
on the Cross.
For Jesus, to be about his Father's affairs meant a move from a
nuclear family in a small town to being part of a much wider family,
his people the Jews, and with the gentle guidance of others, those who
were not Jews, the whole human family. He saw all people as his mother
father, sisters, brothers.
To be Son of God the Father brought him into a similar relationship
with all people as the Father had as Creator. As St John reminds us,
Jesus born at Bethlehem, was the Word made flesh, the same Word of God
active in Creation.
We who have grown up in human families, and have been baptised, have
also moved beyond our human, birth, families to be members of God's
family. As St John says in our Second Reading, (1 John 3:1-2;21-24),
"Think of the love that the Father has lavished on us by letting us
be called God's children; and that is what we are." "My dear people,
we are already the children of God..."
And just as it was for Jesus, so is it for us. We must ask ourselves,
"What does it mean to call God Father?" St John gives us some help in
Second Reading, "His commandments are these: that we believe in the
name of his Son Jesus Christ and that we love one another as he told
us to." Believe and love. This is first of all a personal matter, to
be worked out in our daily lives.
We struggle with both. Ideally we learn both in our human families,
but not always. Then again, the real learning about loving and believing
takes place in our daily lives in temptation, struggle, suffering,
sometimes in success, more often in failure.
We learn the answer to the question, "What does it mean to call God
Father?" in the same way as Jesus, by following our call at baptism,
by working with what God seems to give us, not with what we think he
should have given us.
And we are not alone. "We know that he lives in us by the Spirit that
he has given us." We know Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament of the
Eucharist, in our prayers, the Scriptures, and in the Community we call
Church. Jesus invites us to be about his and our Father's affairs.
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Views is a
publication of
St Peter's Eastern Hill, Melbourne Australia.
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