Why Do We Address God as "Father," Instead of "Mother"?

Well, because that is what Jesus did, and as Christians we don't have an independent relationship with God; we participate in Jesus' relationship.

Over the years I have heard a number of people object, "But Jesus only did that because of the patriarchal nature of ancient cultures" - the underlying assumption being that Jesus' word choice was culturally conditioned.   

The difficulty with that assumption is the freedom Jesus demonstrated throughout his ministry in breaking with the gender conventions of the time:  meeting with women privately, welcoming them to travel with him independent of their husbands, and his selection of women (unable to testify in courts of law at that point in history!) as the first witnesses to His resurrection.  His decision to name only males as apostles and address God with the masculine “Father” was not circumscribed by the outside culture.  In fact, priestesses and female deities existed throughout the Middle East as well as among the Greeks and Romans.  As the Word made flesh, Jesus’ revelation of God as Father was both free and deliberate. But why?

In Hebrew and Christian thought God is bigger than gender.  Both male and female are reflections of the Deity (Gen.1:27).  Scripture compares God to a mother (Is.49:15; Hos.11:3-4).  And yet, throughout the whole of Scripture, God is never addressed as “Mother.”  There is something about fatherhood that is more analogous than motherhood for describing God’s relationship to us.  Scripture does not come out and explain it, but I would suggest that male and female have been invested by God with an “iconic character.”  By this I mean that the differences we observe between male and female can give us insight into spiritual realities.

Think about the complementary roles the mother and father play in the conception of the child.  The father comes from the "outside," and the mother welcomes the father into herself.  The ovum produced by the mother awaits the father's sperm cell, and the union of the two produces the child’s body.  The child then grows within her mother, unable to see her father’s face until birth.   

God also plays a "Fatherly" role in every conception - coming from outside of all creation to breathe a spirit, an intellectual soul, into the child at the instant of his/her physical conception.  All of God’s actions come from “the outside” so to speak, and in this way are Fatherly.  The Church on the other hand – and the individual souls that make it up - is the  part of creation that has received God into itself and allowed him to bring forth new supernatural life.  In this analogy, whether biologically male or female, each human soul resembles the feminine.  This explains why Scripture refers to the Church as Christ’s Bride (Eph.5:22-23), and the Mother of the faithful (Rev.12:17).

As members of Christ's Body we approach God the Father through, with, and in Jesus.  In union with him we pray "Our Father, who art in heaven ..."
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This post was adapted from Through, With, and In Him: The Prayer Life of Jesus and How to Make It Our Own.

Question:  If we think about the "iconic character" attached to gender, might that yield an insight as to why the ministerial priesthood has been reserved to males?  If the priest is ordained to function "in the person of Christ" in ministering to the Lord's Bride, then doesn't the priest's masculinity function as a sacramental sign of Christ, the Divine Groom?

ABC's "Zero Hour"

So I watched the first episode online last night - can't resist me an X-Files-ish hour of television.  The show definitely kept me interested, and believe me you will not see the revelation at the end of the first hour coming.  I will tune in again to see where this is going.

Like many historical conspiracy theories of late, Zero Hour, plays fast and loose with history and its writers are clearly not making any attempts at accuracy regarding the beliefs of Catholic Christians or others.  They're simply grabbing religious terms that people have probably heard, filed away in the back of their minds, and the show's writers are able to throw in to add an air of the mysterious/spiritual to the telling of their story.  I'll give you a few examples:

The Rosicrucians are the secret society at the heart of Zero Hour.  They are portrayed as a group within Catholicism, especially interested in mysticism and the End Times, dating back to the second century.  Alright, historically Rosicrucianism dates back to the early 1600's, and it was actually quite anti-Catholic.  

Zero Hour goes on to reveal that during World War II, "the Church ... without the knowledge of the pope," ordained "twelve new apostles," to save the world from the Nazis.  "The Twelve" were entrusted with guarding some relic hidden beneath a Bavarian cathedral that, if discovered by the Nazis, would set in motion the end of the world.  "The Church" in this case seems to refer to the Rosicrucians within the Catholic Church. (As I finished typing that sentence I realized how completely crazy this show sounds; should I give another hour of my life to seeing where it goes?)

Quick theological reality check:  Within Christianity "the Twelve Apostles" is only and ever used to refer to those men who encountered Jesus after His Resurrection and were established by Him as the unrepeatable foundation stones of His Church (Rev. 21:12-14) - and Peter in an utterly unique way (Mt. 16:17-19).  So any talk of a new group of the Twelve is simply an impossibility.  And "the Church" ordaining without the knowledge of the pope?  What does that even mean?  This transformation of the Rosicrucians into an ancient religious order within the Catholic Church makes for some interesting story telling possibilities, but it it also creates a Christianity with only a passing resemblance to the actual Faith.  Keeping all of this in mind, I was still left scratching my head when a Rosicrucian Catholic priest (in Nazi Germany) lamented, "Not even God can save us now ... only the Twelve." Clearly, not a well-catechized guy.  I don't know what they are teaching in that universe's Rosicrucian Catholic seminaries, but it's nothing I would devote my life to.

On my way to Confession ...

... and I have been thinking about its healing properties.  Earlier this morning I read a powerful quotations from Pope John Paul II's Apostolic Exhortation on Reconciliation and Penance:

“But as it reflects on the function of this sacrament, the church’s consciousness discerns in it, over and above the character of judgment in the sense just mentioned, a healing of a medicinal character. And this is linked to the fact that the Gospel frequently presents Christ as healer, while his redemptive work is often called, from Christian antiquity, medicina salutis. “I wish to heal, not accuse,” St. Augustine said, referring to the exercise of the pastoral activity regarding penance”

It brought a few analogies to mind regarding the discomfort I feel before confessing my sins before one of Jesus' priests and the incomparable benefits it brings to my soul:

• I don't like it when my doctor says, "I'm going to need you to disrobe;" but it's a necessity for the doc to examine and treat some conditions.
• Sometimes we're embarrassed to talk to the doctor about a health problem, but until we are able to acknowledge it, the doctor cannot prescribe the cure.
• After we've received treatment, to prevent the problem from returning, we may need to change certain behaviors - less foods high in fat, less caffeine, more exercise, more fibre in our diet, etc. (That's penance - repair the damage we have done to ourselves and Christ's Body and move forward in such a way that we do not fall into that sin again.)

Confession isn't easy; but nothing about Redemption is.  Whenever I read the Bible I am forced to acknowledge that God the Father is not in the business of raising wimps.  We all recognize that He never gives up on us, never abandons us, no matter how many times we fail; but we often fail to acknowledge that there is a second manner in which He never gives up on us - He never stops challenging us.  

The Father never says, "Oh, Shane is never going to look like Jesus.  I'm going to stop challenging Him to and just let him stay the way he is for eternity."  No, God loves us right now, just as we are; but He loves us too much to let us stay the way we are!  He wants children who have grown strong under His loving discipline, grown strong by repeatedly opening themselves to His grace.  As Paul wrote, "continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose" (Phil.2:12-13).  We might well experience "fear and trembling" before making our Confession, but oh how it allows God to work in us!

And you and I know - Jesus would not have established the Sacrament if it was necessary for us.  He knew what He was doing when He appeared to the Apostles on that first Easter, and said,
“Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained” (John 20:22-23).  And, through the Holy Spirit, the Apostles knew what they were doing when they ordained presbyters (the technical term for those we commonly refer to as priests) to share in their ministry of forgiving or retaining sins.  Note how it is was simply mentioned in passing in connection with the Anointing of the Sick:

Is any among you sick? Let him call for the presbyters of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord; and the prayer of faith will save the sick man, and the Lord will raise him up; and if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. Therefore, confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed (James 5:14-16).

Confession.  Has it been awhile since you've seen the doctor?  I want to be healthy; I'm on my way.  "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just, and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness" (1 John 1:9). Hope to see you there!

"Me, a Priest?"

Photo by Patnac

Yes, me - and you too!  Today is the last day of the Church's year, the Feast of Christ the King, and one of the messages in today's readings is how we share not only Jesus' kingship, but His priesthood!

"To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood, who has made us into a kingdom, priests for his God and Father, to him be glory and power forever and ever. Amen. " (Rev.1:6)

Every baptized man and woman share in the priesthood of Christ, offering all of our words and actions in this world to the Father.  St. Paul wrote of this to the Christians in Rome:

I appeal to you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. (Rom.12:1)

The ordained priesthood  supports us in this by making Christ's priesthood sacramentally present - feeding us His Flesh and Blood in the Eucharist, absolving our sins in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, communicating the grace of Confirmation and a deeper participation in the Gifts of the Spirit, anointing us to impart strength and healing in the Anointing of the Sick.  Or as St. Paul wrote:

[Jesus] gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ; until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ.  

You my friend share the priesthood of Jesus Christ.  So suit up and start offering your day to the Lord!