Meditations on the Father

"God as Father, as source, as guide, as comforter; these are the inner resources with which a man can withstand the mass assault of the world. And this is no mere figure of speech ---it is actual fact. The man of faith is aware of the solicitude, the compassion, the deepseated support of providence in innumerable silent ways even when he is attacked from all sides and the outlook seems hopeless.

God offers words of wonderful comfort and encouragement; he has ways of dealing with the most desperate situations. All things have a purpose and they help again and again to bring us back to our Father."

-----Alfred Delp,
A Jesuit priest facing the inevitability of death in a Nazi concentration camp

"Even our most intimate, unique experiences happen in our life because they encounter similar ones in other men, and thus meet themselves. The history in which we live our common life together is the place where everyone finds himself. Now there we may find a man who called simply the Son and who said "Father" when he expressed the mystery of his life. He spoke of the Father when he saw the lilies of the field in their beauty, or when His heart overflowed in prayer, when He thought of the hunger and need of men and longed for the consummation that ends all the transitoriness of this seemingly empty and guilty existence. With touching tenderness He called this dark, abysmal mystery, which He knew to be such, Abba. And He called it thus not only when beauty and hope helped Him to overcome the incomprehensibility of existence in this world. but also when He met the darkness of death and the cup which was distilled all the guilt, vanity and emptiness of this world was placed at His lips and He could only repeat, the desperate words of the Psalmist: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me!" But even when that other, all embracing word was present to him, which sheltered even this forsakenness: "Father, into Thy hands I commend my life."

----Karl Rahner, in his book Grace in Freedom.

My favourite prayer for this year has become "Father, Father, I love You. Hear my tender cry." Upon facing seemingless and poignant situations, my heart can only find refuge and comfort in the Father arms.