“Daddy”
05 March 1999 09:58
This is a brief summary of the Holy Father’s weekly catechesis. Its significance will be clear to everybody familiar with Vassula’s messages! The full text of the catechesis should follow in a few days time.
VATICAN CITY, MAR 3 (ZENIT).- In his traditional weekly audience with the faithful in Saint Peter’s Square, John Paul II spoke about the most important news of Christianity.
In studying the ancient Eastern religions, it is surprising to discover how the divine was invoked as father as early as the second and third millennium before Christ. In the Old Testament, fourteen key texts refer to God as the Father of the people of Israel. But when we meditate on Jesus’ teachings, something quite new emerges: the word “Abba,” the word with which little children who speak Aramaic call their father — “Daddy.”
The Holy Father said it was one of the few words the evangelist Mark did not translate. “Jesus used this word (during the agony in the Mount of Olives) to speak to God and to show, in the fullness of maturity of his life, which was about to end on the cross, the intimate relationship which, even in that dramatic hour, united him to his Father.”
“‘Abba’ reveals the extraordinary intimacy between Jesus and the Father, an intimacy without precedents in the Biblical context or outside of it. In virtue of the death and resurrection of Jesus, only begotten Son of the Father, we too, according to Saint Paul, are raised to the dignity of sons and possess the Holy Spirit who allows us to cry: ‘Abba’! Father!”