Tuesday, August 04, 2009

Our Children Teach - God the Father and His Children

The Lord calls us to become like little children:

"At this time the disciples came to Jesus and said, 'Who is the greatest in the kingdom of Heaven?' So he called a little child to him whom he set among them. Then he said, 'In truth I tell you, unless you change and become like little children you will never enter the kingdom of Heaven. And so, the one who makes himself as little as this little child is the greatest in the kingdom of Heaven."
Matthew 18:1-4

As Catholic Fathers and Catholic Mothers, we can begin to discover the yearning, or a burden, that is placed upon our heart to meditate and eventually contemplate our relationships with our own children.

Lately, this prayerful meditation and contemplation has yielded some fruit.

That is, in contemplating my fatherly love for our children along with the almost infinite number of times we need to correct and discipline them, I am discovering how it is that God the Father looks at us in His love.

No matter how many times we need to get down on our knees before Jesus Christ present in the priest to confess our sins, God the Father still loves us.

His look of love towards us His children is much deeper than our own look of love for our own children. In His love, he has given us His Son, Jesus Christ, in the Most Blessed Sacrament to feed us, heal us, and sustain us (John 6:25-71).

With this realization has come the slow but oncoming dawn of realization: God the Father truly loves us as His children!

He accepts us as we are in all of our woundedness and brokenness. And, just as we are with our own children, He does not excuse us from responsibility for our behaviour!

The key for us is to learn about our relationship with God the Father via our relationship with our children. As Catholic Fathers and Catholic Mothers, our family relationships are one of the key paths we can walk to grow our relationship with Him Who Loves us.

John Everett

Feast of John Marie Vianney

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