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?

fatherhood and Fatherhood

I have been recalling how it felt when my first child arrived – ecstatic, scared, awed. Awed – that’s a good word. I was awed at the new life in my arms. Looking at him, how could anyone doubt that there was a God when they saw the beauty of this boy? I remember attending Mass a couple of Sundays afterward and, as the Eucharistic prayer began, just weeping in a loving awe at the realizations sweeping over me:


The first was in regard to Jesus: My little boy, the most important person in the world to me, was loved by Jesus. Jesus had stretched out His arms and let nails be driven through them for my child. I was grateful that Jesus had died for me, but now I felt an unspeakably deeper gratitude because He had laid down His Life for my child !


The second was in regard to God the Father: I know that theologians have explored why the Son became incarnate instead of one of the Other Persons of the Trinity. But what I saw, becoming a new dad, was that the Father's sending of His Son was an even greater act of Love for us than if the Father had come Himself. In sending His Son, the Father sent the One He Loves and cherishes even more than Himself ! And the Father sent Him, knowing how we would treat Him, knowing that we would torture and kill Him. Paul's words from Romans never penetrated me so deeply, "God proves His love for us in this: that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us."


There's fatherhood, and then there's Fatherhood. And I stand in awe.

A Good Reminder

I was walking this morning, thinking about the passing of Brennan Manning and all of the awesome stories he shared regarding God's radical love for us.  I think, and I think Brennan would agree with me, that parenthood gives us a unique entry point into the way God "feels" about us.  Being a dad has helped me wrap my mind around (at least a little better) the truth that God loves us each of us infinitely.  Having two kids has taught me the way that loving one with every fiber of my being does not make me incapable of loving the other with every fiber of my being - love is not a quantity that gets burned up.  It has taught me that discipline/punishment is not the opposite of love, but an expression of it.  And it is incredibly precious to God when he sees us loving one another. God's love is tender.  (It's good to read 1 Cor.13 every now and then.)

It also amazes me to realize how my parenthood is a pale reflection of God's Fatherhood.  Where my ability to love my children is limited by my creaturehood, His is not; He is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent!  He is not tainted by sin.  His love is always perfect - perfectly wise and just.

"Our Father Who art in Heaven - Stay There!"

I came across that line yesterday in Monsignor Joseph Cirrincione's little book, St. Joseph, Fatima, and Fatherhood. He felt that it was the way many of us pray the Our Father in the depths of our hearts. We are Christian in name but secular in lifestyle. God has His place in our lives, but He isn't our Life. And when we live in this way we rob ourselves of experiencing God as Father, as the one who loves us and raises us up to understand how the world really works and helps train us to make a contribution to it.

Fessing Up

I just went to Confession this morning. From 9 to 10 a.m., my pastor and I talked. No, "talked" doesn't begin to capture it: In the presence of Jesus, I let it all hang out - all of my garbage, my struggles - and my pastor reflected back to me what he "heard the Holy Spirit addressing" in my life. Those were his words, his description of "spiritual direction" (very cool).

Have you been to Confession lately? It had been a number of months for me. (Oh, you haven't been in a year? 20 years? More? You're not going to shock God, and you aren't going to shock the priest either; they'll be grateful you're there!) This was the ministry that Jesus entrusted to the Apostles and their successors on the night of His Resurrection, “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained” (John 20:23). It's all about our healing. That's what the Apostle James taught the Church:

"Is any among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him...the prayer of faith will save the sick man, and the Lord will raise him up; and if he has committed any 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)

So GO - God has a gift that He wants you to come claim. Find the hope and healing you need. It's not a "magical" fix, but the strength that comes from knowing we are loved and supported no matter how we have fallen in the past. God Himself is present and He longs to give us the strength to do better than we have, to live past our failings.