22nd Week in Ordinary Time He is the image of the invisible God. (Colossians 1:15) From Pope Benedict XVI’s general audience, January 30, 2013: “It is not always easy today to talk about fatherhood, especially in the Western world. Families are broken, the workplace is ever more absorbing, families worry and often struggle to make ends meet and the distracting invasion of the media invades our daily life… . At times communication becomes difficult, trust is lacking and the relationship with the father figure can become problematic; moreover, in this way even imagining God as a father becomes problematic… . “Yet the revelation in the Bible helps us to overcome these difficulties by speaking to us of a God who shows us what it really means to be ‘father.’ … As Jesus revealed, he is the Father who feeds the birds of the air … who welcomes and embraces his lost but repentant son, who gives freely to those who ask him, and offers the bread of heaven and the living water… . “It is in the Lord Jesus that the benevolent face of the Father, who is in heaven, is fully revealed. It is in knowing him that we may also know the Father. It is in seeing him that we can see the Father, because he is in the Father and the Father is in him. He is ‘the image of the invisible God’ (Colossians 1:15). “Consequently God’s fatherhood is infinite love, tenderness that bends over us, frail children, in need of everything. Psalm 103, the great hymn of divine mercy, proclaims: ‘As a father pities his children, so the Lord pities those who fear him. For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust’ (Psalm 103:13-14). It is our smallness, our frail human nature that becomes an appeal to the Lord’s mercy, that he may show his greatness and tenderness as a Father, helping, forgiving us and saving us. “And God responded to our plea by sending his Son who died and rose for us. He entered our frailty and did what man on his own could never have done… . It is there, in the Paschal Mystery, that the definitive face of the Father is revealed in its full splendor.” “Jesus, thank you for revealing the Father to me. May my life reflect the kind, merciful face of God!” Psalm 100:1-5; Luke 5:33-39
Posted on: Fri, 06 Sep 2013 11:41:43 +0000
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