In today's Holy Gospel, Our Blessed Lord responds to the request of one of His disciples by teaching them how to pray. The Lord's Prayer or the Our Father as it is most commonly known is the model prayer for all Christians. In teaching His disciples this prayer the Lord Jesus was revealing then as now that the First Divine Person of the Most Holy Trinity is Father. In the Old Testament God is called Father 11 times while in the New Testament He is called Father 170 times.
But why do we call God Father? No doubt many of us may have asked ourselves this question in addition to ones like it such as: is God male or female, can God be called mother? If God is neither male nor female then why is God called Father?
The very fact that our Blessed Lord calls the First Person of the Trinity Father is reason enough. But let us explore these questions a little more in-depth so as to deepen our knowledge and love of the Father whom Jesus reveals in His very own prayer, the prayer which becomes ours through the grace of Holy Baptism.
God, as Holy Mother Church teaches is neither male nor female, He is Spirit. Yet, however, the second Person of the Most Holy Trinity who with the Father and the Holy Spirit is one God did become a human being and more specifically became a male human being. So in one sense a person who claims that God is male is correct in so far as they are speaking about the mystery of the Incarnation.
God has imprinted or stamped upon our bodies a theology that we cannot escape. Our bodies are filled with theological meaning. So given the fact that Jesus had a male anatomy does this justify the belief that men are superior to women? Of course not. But it does certainly teach us something about the first Person of the Most Holy Trinity. For in addition to becoming a human being so as to put an end to sin and the empty promises of the devil, Jesus came to reveal the first Person of the Most Holy Trinity and He did so as Father. So was Jesus' male anatomy a product of chance? Was it assumed so as to appease a male-dominated/patriarchal society? Or was it a necessary element of His mission? In other words, did Jesus, the second Person of the Most Holy Trinity who has existed eternally with the Father and the Holy Spirit, intentionally choose a male anatomy with full freedom motivated only by His mission, a mission which is inseparable from His very own Person? Aided by Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition Holy Mother Church confidently proclaims the strength of our Blessed Lord, who is not weak minded or easily pushed around by the passsing shadows of cultures and societal taboos. We see one example of this in Our Lord's conversation with the Samaritan Woman at the well, an action heavily frowned upon by the Rabbi's of Jesus' day.
Jesus chose a male anatomy precisely because He wanted to proclaim the Mystery of His Father, who through Baptism has become Our Father also. Jesus' choice to have a male body is also a reflection of His desire to uncover the original meaning of what it meant to be male and female according to God's creative plan and intent. God's creative plan entailed the reality of sexual differentiation and the call to experience the fruitfulness of sexual complementarity. Both this differentiation and complementarity are in God's creative plan aimed at revealing the Mystery of Himself and our call to participate in His Divine life.
In what way then does sexual differentiation and complementarity reveal this mystery? A prudent reflection upon the sexual anatomy of both male and female reveals the call to communion that exists between man and woman within the confines of holy Matrimony. It also reveals that the male anatomy expresses itself as a gift which the female anatomy is designed to receive. The male anatomy is designed therefore to initiate and the female anatomy is designed to receive. This differentiation and complimentarity speak to a much deeper truth, which they as symbols herald through their bodies. This truth involves the mystery of Masculine Personality and Feminine Personality. Masculine Personality is characterized by 'giving' or 'initiating', whereas the Feminine Personality is characterized by 'receiving' and 'dependence'. Now while these personalities are expressed visibly by one specific anatomy, ie. Masculine personality=male anatomy and Feminine personality=female anatomy this does not mean that a man does not possess to varying degrees this feminine personality or that a woman does not possess to varying degrees masculine personality. What this does say, however, is that a male anatomy reveals the truth of masculine personality while the female anatomy reveals the feminine personality. The whole of this revelation transcends the horizontal meaning that it has for the relationship existing between men and women by symbolically pointing us to the vertical meaning that it inherently makes visible, a meaning that teaches us about God and our relationship to Him. God is completely masculine in His personality while in relationship to Him all of creation bears a feminine personality. As a result we see the covenant language of the Holy Bible characterized by spousal analogy. In the Old Testament we read that God is the Divine Bridegroom of His holy people Israel who is spoken of as bride. This analogy is carried over into the New Testament and given it's fullest expression in the new covenant established by Christ the Divine Bridegroom with His bride the Church, a covenant sealed with the Blood of His Cross.
So this analogy works itself out like this:
God and Israel
Christ and Church
Bridegroom and Bride
Male and Female
From the Fatherhood of God flows the esteem in which Holy Mother Church defends the Traditional definition of Marriage as the covenant capable of existing between one man and one woman witnessed and blessed by Christ's representative the Priest.
This also touches on the issue of those men and women who have been born with or possibly cultured into a homosexual orientation. By it's nature a union of this type obscures and dismisses the very reality of God's covenant love for the world which is seen in Christ's love for His bride the Church and by Sacramental extension in the love expressed between man and woman within the confines of Holy Matrimony.
Finally, the Fatherhood of God which Jesus reveals through everything He does and says sheds light on the issue of a male oriented Priesthood. Without a proper education in the theology that is inherently present within our bodies as male and female this particular point could simply be dismissed as an issue of inequality that has it's roots in a patriarchal era. In fact this is why the Priest is called Father because as the representative of Christ through Holy Orders he is empowered to continue the mission of Jesus which is to uncover and destroy the works of satan and to reveal the first Person of the Most Holy Trinity whom Jesus in today's Gospel teaches us to call Father through the intimacy of prayer.
Any attempt to divinize the earth, which is common among the adherents of mother earth worship is to deny or at least obscure the Fatherhood of God. It is to reject that God is a loving Father from whom every grace and blessing flows. Supporters of mother earth who place a god-like quality upon creation are deceived and when persistent in this error after having been informed are seriously dangerous to others not to say anything about their own spiritual condition. Mother earth worship is much like the story told in the Book of Genesis about Adam and Eve who instead of waiting upon and trusting in the Fatherhood of God to provide for them they chose at the instigation of satan, father of lies, to reach out their hands and take instead of receiving as God had intended. They got caught up in the gift and not the true gift, which is the Giver of the gift. Is this not what mother earth worship does? It sees the gift of the earth as the Giver of the gift which we can be at one with as if it were the underlying principle of all existence as is common among various strains of Hindu and Buddhist belief (the belief that there is one reality that we must work toward so as to be freed from the false sense of the self). In essence mother earth worship denies the distinction between us and God by placing a godlike quality upon the earth which we must strive to be at one with. This pursuit leaves little space for the necessary mediation of Jesus Christ in experiencing perfection. The Fatherhood of God reveals our creatureliness and our utter and complete dependence upon the generous and all loving God who created us. Mother earth worship removes this sense of dependence by replacing it with a sense of mutual exchanges thereby limiting the need to acknowledge one's dependence. Mother earth worship is in my estimation characterized by pride, impersonalism and intolerance toward rightful distinctions.
In the story of Adam and Eve it was they who took the initiative, which is the prerogative of God. They were implicitly denying their creatureliness by not acknowledging the limits placed upon them. Their action revealed an unwillingness to be Feminine in their relationship with God, they were not going to simply stand by and wait upon someone else to offer hand-me-downs.
Yet in God's punishment upon the Woman He says that her giving birth will be characterized by pain and yet her desire will be for the Man. Does this not also carry within it according to the same theology stamped upon their bodies that even though humanity lifted up it's foot against the Fatherhood of God in the Garden our deepest desire is still for Him, a gift however which can only be received not taken. The punishment levied against the Man entailed making his livelihood by the sweat of His Brow. Was this not the plight of the Son of Man, The Christ who in making a livelihood for His family had to undergo the sweat of His brow on the wood of the Cross so as to mediate between the Father and the Woman the possible union that was her desire in the midst of her suffering. The woman symbolic of the whole human race injured her relationship with the Fatherhood of God by overstepping her bounds and yet despite her sin her desire for divinity would not be diminished but rather it would be given birth only with great difficulty. Is this giving birth not indicative of humanity's interior struggle with self mastery which will happen only by it's union with the Man who will make fruitful her attempts by laying down his life on the wood of the Cross thereby initiating the plan of salvation by the sweat of His brow. In this story as the Father levies out punishment He does so not only upon humanity but upon His own divinity which would be subjected to the pain of a frail human nature torn and ripped asunder on the Cross.
Today, let us give thanks to God for revealing the very mystery of salvation in the theology imprinted upon our bodies. Let us be proud to be a male or a female acknowledging that our particular body proclaims symbolically the mystery of Christ's sacrificial love for the Church and the Church's response to Christ of reception through the sacred action of 'Remembrance', which is the mystery of the Father's love for the world, a love that flows from His initiative. May our sins never blind us to the perpetual truth of this mystery proclaimed so well in John's Gospel, "For God so loved the world that 'He gave' His only begotten Son so that all who believe (receive Him in faith) may not perish but have everlasting life.
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