OUR FATHER, WHO ART IN HEAVEN

A SERMON FOR THE SUNDAY WITHIN THE OCTAVE OF SACRED HEART

This is a day dedicated to our fathers.  We children revere our fathers today in a very special way, mindful of the role they have played in our lives, recognizing the place of honor and esteem they have earned from those of us they have raised and protected.

There’s something very, very special about the connection that exists between a father and his children.  In fact, it’s a love that has its origin in eternity, before time and space began, before ever the world was.  Before God created the heavens and the earth, the love between Father and Son already existed, and had existed from everlasting.  It was the love of the Blessed Trinity, the love of the Father for the Son, and the Son for the Father, and the Holy Ghost which is the love between them.  We who are created in the image of this Triune God, honor our fathers today as Christ has always honored his.

The fact that there are human fathers and sons at all is, of course, due to this original love of God.  Theirs is a love that is infinite, a love that therefore chose to create man so that we might share in his happiness by loving God too.  God created Adam for this purpose, even though he knew full well that Adam would betray his love, and that in time we all would.  He created us, even knowing the terrible sacrifice that his own divine Son, the Son of God made man, would alone be able to be make to save us from for our sins.  Such is God’s love for us. 

And such love deserves great love in return.  When God gave his Ten Commandments to Moses, the first three demand this love.  They tell us that we must love only the true God, that we must keep holy his Name, and that must we set aside the sabbath for his worship.  The other seven tell us how to behave towards our fellow-man, and the first of them, the Fourth Commandment, which is given supreme prominence over the others that follow, demands that we honor our father and our mother.  Such is the importance placed on the love we must demonstrate towards our parents, and the honor we must bestow upon them.  To betray our father, to bring dishonor to the family name, is the very worst kind of sin, only one step short of being disloyal to God himself. 

And yet the story of man is one long story of betrayal after betrayal, sin after sin.  How unworthy we are of the love that our heavenly Father has showered upon us.  But there are also stories in our long and sad history of men who had an abundance of love for their divine Father, who lived holy lives, and who eventually became saints in heaven.  And if I were to recount just one story of this kind of love, the greatest story ever told about this love, what story would I tell?  It would be the story of an angel appearing to a simple maiden in Nazareth.  The story of her humble acquiescence to the divine will of her heavenly Father, and the subsequent birth of a Child, the Son of God, in Bethlehem.  It would be the story of our Redemption.

Only twice in that story do we ever hear the voice of God the Father.  It happens first at our Lord’s Baptism in the River Jordan, when the Son of God was symbolically cleansed, showing himself to be completely free from sin.  The second occasion on which we hear God the Father speak was at our Lord’s Transfiguration, when his Son appeared to his apostles in all his divine glory.  On both occasions, the Father’s words are the same.  God wants to make sure we get the message, and so he proclaims it twice: “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”  This is the message we are given directly from the mouth of God the Father.  The message that a Father loves his Son.

When that Son taught us to pray, he gave us the most perfect prayer of all.  It begins with the words “Our Father, who art in heaven.”  He does not tell us to pray to his Father, but to our Father.  By becoming Man, the Son of God became our brother, and thus, we all have the same Father in heaven.  Hallowed be his Name.  We are all the children of God, and when we speak to him, when we perform any important action, we do so in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.  The Creed that contains the most important truths of our faith begins with the words “I believe in God, the Father Almighty.”  All good things come to us from above, “from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.”  We owe everything to our heavenly Father, even our very existence.

And so it is that without God the Father we are nothing.  A family without a father is a very sad thing.  For it is the father’s role to provide for his wife and children, not only financially, but by the example of his upstanding moral character.  Without this example, the children are in peril of being lost, and only a special grace from God can prevent that from happening.  The same thing goes for a nation without a king.  The king is the father of the nation, wielding the authority of his heavenly Father from whom all power derives, and in whose name all kings rule.  Without a ruler who has power to rule, there will be anarchy, and we see this happening today as Anarchists, Satanists, and Democrats alike march together, using every opportunity that comes their way to prevent our President from governing this nation under God.

In the Church, we call our priests “Father,” because it is their job, just like the father of any family, to provide.  They provide you with the sacraments, with the truths of the faith, and with all the other tools you need to save your souls.  They are supposed, also, to demonstrate that same upstanding moral example that all fathers should provide, so that the faithful may follow.  Alas, so many of us fail in that task, and, as a direct result, many souls have perished.  The Second Vatican Council was supposed to be a Council of Church Fathers.  Fathers, one and all, who were supposed to provide their children with the truths of the faith, the nourishment of sound doctrine.  They failed, miserably, and in some cases, deliberately.  The highest of these Church Fathers, the red-robed cardinals, even came together in the supreme council of all, the Conclave, to elect a supreme ruler, one who would be known as the Holy Father.  We know how that story has unfolded, time after time, since the late 1950s.  Without a Holy Father, we are left lost and floundering.  We are in peril.

Church, state, even our own families are gradually being obliterated by the enemies of God.  And how are they doing it?  By attacking and then depriving us of our earthly fathers, whether it be Pope, President, or just plain Dad.  Our reaction must be to remain constantly aware of this never-ending assault on our fathers, biological, political and spiritual, so that we might be prepared for the battle that now falls to us to fight, praying to the one Father they can never take from us, our Father in heaven.  Thy kingdom come!  Thy will be done!

On this Sunday within the Octave of the Sacred Heart, you may be surprised that I have not mentioned the Sacred Heart once so far.  I do so now, not as a footnote to what we’ve been discussing, but as the very essence of the current situation.  That Sacred Heart, pierced by a lance as our Lord died on the Cross was a Heart filled with love.  Love for us certainly, and greater love no one has ever had for us.  But above all, love for his Father who has loved him in return infinitely and eternally.  And so it was that the greatest agony of our Lord’s Passion was the mystical separation between himself and his Father.  God the Father, in a mysterious and mystical sense, “turned away” from his Son in disgust at the sight of the sins of the world our blessed Lord was carrying on his shoulders, the infinite offences against his divine majesty that God could not stand to look upon.  For one terrible moment as he died, the Sacred and very human Heart of Jesus could no longer feel his Father’s love.  And as he hung there dying, he uttered the most awful words ever pronounced, when he cried out “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me!”  This was the supreme moment of his sacrifice, suffered voluntarily out of love for his Father and out of love for us.  Understand this, and we will begin to comprehend the breadth and length and depth and height of the love of both Father and Son for each other and for us.  And we will finally have a small insight into the enormity of what we ask for, when we implore the most Sacred Heart of Jesus to have mercy upon us.