Pope: Fatherhood crisis hurts our understanding of God

Pope Benedict XVI on Wednesday continued his series on prayer in the letters of Saint Paul. Speaking to tens of thousands of people gathered in St. Peter’s Square for the weekly general audience, the Holy Father expanded on the previous week’s catechesis on the Holy Spirit’s role in prayer.
“In our reflection on prayer in the letters of Saint Paul, we now consider two passages in which the Apostle speaks of the Holy Spirit, who enables us to call upon God as ‘Abba’, our Father,” the Pope said.
“The word ‘Abba’ was used by Jesus to express his loving relationship with the Father; our own use of this word is the fruit of the presence of the Spirit of Christ within us. Through the gift of the Holy Spirit in Baptism, we have become sons and daughters of God, sharing by adoption in the eternal sonship of Jesus.”
The Holy Father pointed out Jesus never lost faith in the Father, and used the word ‘Abba’ even during his prayer at Gethsemane, where he asked the Father to “take the cup away from me.” (Mk 14:36)
Pope Benedict pointed out the word ‘Abba’ appears in the letters of St. Paul twice.
First in Galatians, which reads “As proof that you are children, God sent the spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying out, ‘Abba, Father!’”(Gal 4:6) And then in Romans, where Paul says “For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received a spirit of adoption, through which we cry, ‘Abba, Father!’” (Rom 8:15)
“These two substantial statements speak of the sending and receiving of the Holy Spirit, the gift of the Risen One, who makes us sons in Christ, the Only-begotten Son, and gives us a filial relationship with God,” the Pope said.
Pope Benedict told the pilgrims the modern crisis of fathers absent from the family makes it more difficult to understand the profound meaning of God being a father to us.
“Perhaps modern man does not perceive the beauty, grandeur and profound consolation contained in the word ‘father’ with which we can turn to God in prayer, because the father figure is often not sufficiently present in today’s world, and is often not a sufficiently positive presence in everyday life,” the Pope said.
“But from Jesus himself, by his filial relationship with God, we learn the true significance of the word ‘father’, and what is the true nature of the Father who is in heaven.”
The Holy Father then turned to the essence of our prayer in the Spirit.
“When we turn to our Father in the privacy of our rooms, in silence and recollection, we are never alone,” he said.
“Paul teaches us that Christian prayer is not simply our own work, but primarily that of the Spirit, who cries out in us and with us to the Father. In our prayer, we enter into the love of the indwelling Trinity as living members of Christ’s Body, the Church. Our individual prayer is always part of the great symphony of the Church’s prayer. Let us open our hearts ever more fully to the working of the Spirit within us, so that our prayer may lead us to greater trust in the Father and conformity to Jesus, his Son.”
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