The Father Almighty
A Brief Catechesis on CCC, §§232-237, 268-274
Note: This is a slightly modified catechesis I wrote for the Stella Maris Become Catholic program.
“Daddy, throw this ball up to the moon.”
My three-year-old daughter didn’t ask me to do this. She told me to do it.
For her, at least at a certain point in her life (she’s now 15), she thought me and my wife, her parents, could do anything. Throw a ball to the moon. Answer every question imaginable. Provide nonstop entertainment. And so on.
We were like God for her, in a sense. And she wasn’t wrong in thinking this. In a real and tangible way, our parents provide the first window of insight into who God is. Our parents are, as the Catechism says, “the first representatives of God for us.” Think about the image of a father, who stands at the origin of family life as a figure of authority. At the same time, we think of a father’s goodness and affection for his children (cf. CCC, §239) We also think about the tenderness, immanence, and intimacy of motherhood. This said, God transcends sexuality, he transcends “human fatherhood and motherhood, although he is their origin and standard” (CCC, §239).
As good as human parents can be, it’s also the case that they are fallible and fallen. I really can’t throw a ball to the moon or perfectly answer all of my kids’ questions. I’m sinful and I make plenty of dumb mistakes. My sin obscures God’s fatherhood and obstructs my children’s vision of him, so to speak. I’m well aware of my own limitations, or most of them anyhow, and my kids have found me out as they’ve gotten older. I’m no perfect father, but traces of my fatherhood, no matter how faulty on the whole, point to God, the perfect Father.
God, the Father
The people of Israel invoked God as Father inasmuch as God is the Creator of the world. He is the origin of all things. More specifically, he is Father in the people of Israel’s eyes because of the covenant he forged with them — establishing a family-bond with them and calling Israel his “first-born son.” The word “Father” indicates both authority and tenderness. In Scripture, we get a glimpse of God’s authority on Mt. Sinai, for example, as God gives his people the Law, the Ten Commandments — a guide for abiding relationship with him and instructions on how to live with one another.
When it comes to the Father’s tenderness, it is hard to picture a more tender image than we see in the Parable of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15. The father who gives his son his inheritance and allows the son to leave. Of course the son squanders all the money on loose living and ends up in a pig sty. He comes to his senses and returns to his father with the firm intention to be one of his father’s servants (no longer seeing himself as being worthy of being a son). As the son approaches, the father sees his son (you get a sense that the father was always looking toward the horizon, waiting and waiting for the son) and runs to him and welcomes him back into his home — not as a servant or slave, but as his son. The father in the parable is merciful. So, too, God the Father is both just and merciful.
The Almighty Father
We also refer to God the Father as Almighty. Unlike my pathetic attempts to throw a ball to the moon, God the Father, the Almighty could throw the moon itself if he wanted to. God has all power and his power is universal. He rules everything and can do anything. He created the whole cosmos from nothing. He set the stars and planets on their course. He fixed the land and seas and rivers. Nothing was impossible for God and nothing is impossible for him. He is the Lord of the universe. The whole created order is subject to him — all space and time — for he is the master of history, as well.
That said, perhaps God’s most powerful displays of might are not found in light shows in the sky or in the arrangement of galaxies. The most impressive display of power appears in his Fatherhood. God’s fatherhood directs and tempers, so to speak, his power to adopt us into his family, care for our needs, and forgive our sins. God cares for us. He cares about us. He has time for us. This is really amazing when you think about it — the tenderness, meekness, and clemency of God. The greatest exercise of God’s power appears in his care for his littlest ones. The boldest displays of God’s power appear in what is practically hidden from sight.
Think about it. The Father, the Almighty, he creates the universe from nothing. That’s significant power, especially when we think of the unfathomable expanse of the universe. He creates the earth. He creates human beings from the dust of the earth and breathes life into them and provides sustenance for them. They sin against him. The whole world rebels against him. So, he recreates the earth through a flood and re-establishes humanity on the righteous shoulders of Noah. Again, his children sin and eventually end up slaves in Egypt. There, God meets his children again and pulls them from bondage in Egypt through a slew of massive displays of power. He routes Israel’s foes under David’s leadership and so on and so forth.
Curiously, though, as salvation history moves along, God’s infinite power becomes more and more hidden, all the way to the most humble and vulnerable of all actions for the all-powerful God — taking flesh in the womb of one of his own creatures, in the womb of a virgin named Mary. Just think about that. The all-powerful God, the Creator of all, the Pantokrator, taking flesh in one of his creatures — calling one of his creatures “mommy.” And not only that, in the full-flowering of Jesus’ manhood, he suffers and dies a brutal death on a cross at the hands of his own creatures, almost completely abandoned by any of his friends and followers. Yet this act of love, this act of complete self-emptying, reveals the fullness of God’s power — which had nothing to do with routing Jesus’ foes in the display of violence and vengeance and wrath we might associated with almighty power. Instead, it had everything to do with a complete gift of self. God’s “power is made perfect in weakness,” as St. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 12:9. It’s the divine reversal: that which is greatest is smallest. That which is most is least. That which is everything is nothing. God does not manifest his almighty Fatherhood in some cosmic power trip, but in an almost unfathomable act of love — a complete oblation in perfect humility. The Almighty’s truest display of might was not a show of power as we think of power as physical or military might, but of subjecting his power and directing it in the perfect act of love on the Cross. In this way, God defeated death once and for all by subjecting himself to it as the most complete and perfect gift the Son could offer the Father on behalf of humanity — accepting humanity’s complete rejection of the Father’s love and bringing humanity to the Father, anyway, and loving humanity with the Father’s love, despite humanity’s rejection.
To illustrate this point, briefly, I have in my mind the image of my wife’s grandparents. Very early in their long-sought-after retirement, her grandmother suffered a massive stroke, leaving her cognizant but half-paralyzed and mute. A prisoner inside her own body, she faced a life of solitary confinement. Her husband, rather than abandoning her for a relaxing and full retirement, rather than sending her to a nursing home or care center, he willingly submitted to his circumstances (I have no doubt this took tremendous interior strength) and spent his last years caring for his wife as her primary caretaker. Eventually, his strength gave out and they both moved into a care center, where he ended up dying before her. This man’s strength exceeded anything his physical strength could achieve or money could buy. His strength appeared in his humble service to his bride.
To return to our original image, God, the almighty Father’s true display of power has nothing to do with physical strength. It doesn’t have to do with throwing a ball to the moon or throwing the moon itself. Though he could do these things, the depths of his power do not lie in displays of brute strength as we might think. Instead, his power has everything to do with the fact that he can do anything. He is unencumbered. Yet, despite this fact, the Maker of the stars and planets and moons loves my daughter to the point of sending his Son to die for her and so attain her salvation. This kind of fatherly care reveals the true depths of God’s power and provision for us, his children.