‘Abba, Father, Daddy’

21 September 2000 15:44

Readers of the True Life in God messages will immediately recognise the language of the Holy Father’s latest Wednesday Catechesis. It is not the first time that the Pope has spoken about this topic. Copied also, at the end, is part of his catechesis from last year.

VATICAN CITY, SEPT. 20, 2000 (ZENIT.org)

The word “Daddy” summarizes the great novelty brought to the world by Christianity, John Paul II said at his weekly general audience.

What for other religions might seem like blasphemy, with the coming of Christ becomes the very essence of Christian life, the Holy Father told 40,000 pilgrims in St. Peter’s Square.

According to the Pope, Jesus’ favorite expression, which the apostles and evangelists did not dare to translate, was “Abba,” which in Aramaic means “Daddy.” At the same time, it explains the mystery of Christ, who reveals God’s face to man, he added.

“From the Christian perspective, therefore, the experience of God can never be reduced to a generic ‘sense of the divine,'” John Paul II said. Nor can the mediation of Christ’s humanity be considered as something dispensable, he insisted.

The Pope quoted the experience of the great mystics of Christian history: St. Bernard, St. Francis of Assisi, St. Catherine of Siena, St. Teresa of Avila, “and so many who were in love with Christ in our century, from Charles de Foucauld to St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross [Edith Stein].”

The Holy Father continued: “Whoever really experiences God’s love, cannot help but repeat with renewed emotion the exclamation in the First Letter of John: ‘See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are!’ (1 John 3:1). From this perspective we can address God with the tender, spontaneous, intimate invocation, ‘Abba,’ Father. It issues constantly from the lips of the faithful one who feels himself to be a son.”

“Christ gives us the very life of God, a life that surpasses time and introduces us to the mystery of the Father, of his infinite joy and light.”

However, “this sharing in Christ’s life, which makes us ‘sons in the Son,’ is made possible thanks to the gift of the Spirit. …

“Man lives in God and of God: he lives ‘according to the Spirit’ and ‘from the spiritual.'”

The Pope said that intimate union with God seems impossible in man’s daily life, which is characterized by dust and fragility. However, the experience of that love of a God who is also “Daddy,” gives the Christian confidence to address him, according to John Paul. The Pope cited a passage from Thérèse of Lisieux (1873-1897).

“The little bird would like to fly toward that Sun that blinds its eyes; it would like to imitate its sisters, the eagles, which it sees rising to the divine source of the Trinity,” she once wrote. However, “the most it can do is raise its little wings, but as to flying, that is not in its modest power!” What to do? Thérèse answered: “With bold abandonment, it follows with its gaze fixed on its divine Sun. Nothing can frighten it, neither the wind nor the rain.”

and last year’s catechesis:

VATICAN CITY, MAR 3, 1999 (ZENIT)

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!”