by Ottavio De Bertolis

We have already talked about the "second way" of praying according to Saint Ignatius, that is, we must simply stop on the meaning of the Our Father, illuminating the individual words with reasoning or comparisons, in such a way that the expressions we use descend more deeply into our hearts. ; to enjoy and understand more what we say, we can repeat it several times, like a sort of litany, for as long as we want, taking it easy, as they say, until we feel internally that what we have repeated enlightens and comforts us.
We can first start from the first word: "Father". What does it mean, and what does it mean for me? First of all, it should be noted that God is not a father like those we have had according to the flesh, but multiplied, so to speak, to the nth degree.
We could say, on the contrary, that our parents are "fathers" as much as they resemble Him, and in some way refer to Him. God is not the projection of our filial experience (which may not even be that beautiful or “divine” at all), nor is he an absent father or a master father; on the contrary, we are "fathers" as much as we resemble Him. We must therefore purify our memory and straighten out the concept of "father". If it is true that man is the image and likeness of God, in this case we must remember that in the Bible it is exactly the man-woman couple that constitutes that image and that likeness, not man as male.
It follows that "father" means virile strength, support, authority, the rock on which we lean, just as a child feels reassured and protected in the arms of his good father; but, in this perspective, "father" also means maternal tenderness, care, gentleness, typically feminine and maternal warmth.
I remember that when John Paul I, in one of his catechesis which became very well known, said that "God is father, but he is also mother" it caused a sensation. But this is not feminist theology or strange ideas, but a more authentic approach to the biblical message.
Therefore we can contemplate God who makes himself known to us in his being father and mother, keeping in mind, as Saint Thomas Aquinas, the greatest theologian of the Church, teaches that our speaking of God is always analogical; which means that God is much more and very different from what our fathers and mothers may be, but that, in the human experience of fatherhood and motherhood, traits emerge which, infinitely exalted, are those of God himself, for which there is a certain relationship between the expressions we use. “Whoever sees me sees the Father”, says the Lord in the Gospel of John: therefore we know who the Father is and how he acts with us by contemplating Christ himself.
Again, it is not by looking at our father that we understand who the Father is, but by looking at Jesus, who shows him to us, who is transparent, in everything he said and did.
So being a father means being like Jesus: God is a father because he is as he shows us, and not as we imagine him, with our reasoning or on the basis of our experience.
Being a father therefore means welcoming, healing, forgiving, liberating, transforming: it is omnipotence at our service, not terrible omnipotence above our heads. God reveals himself as a father not as Jupiter was the father of the gods.
Divine fatherhood, like the best expressions of human fatherhood, is tenderness, compassion, concern: "the Lord is good and merciful, slow to anger and great in love". We can think of these words of the psalm as we contemplate Jesus in what he says or does: all this the Father reveals to us.
And since in all of this it is always He who loves us first, here is the meaning of our sonship: the son in fact does not choose to be one nor does he "deserve" it, but he is, in a relationship in which he has always and forever finds.
His fatherhood finally reveals what we are: children, and not strangers, or servants, or contract employees. But do we really think so? “What great love has the Father given us to be called children of God, and we really are”, says St. John again, that is, not “up to a certain point”, but without “ifs” and without “buts”, without conditions or terms: which truly belongs only to God, and not to man.