Passport to Perfection: Our FATHER

This article is part of a series of excerpts from David Torkington’s new book, Passport to Perfection. This little book is a guide to living the sacrificial, contemplative spirituality of the early Church. It offers practical, orthodox advice for serious seekers, providing a step-by-step blueprint for prayer, from meditation to contemplation.

While the first word of the Our Father, OUR, puts us in the right context, the second word, FATHER points us in the right direction. The Gospels show how it is the Holy Spirit who progressively invades and fires the human personality of Jesus, until He is eventually set ablaze with the love that raises Him irrevocably into the Father to Eternity. It is the flame of the same Spirit which radiates between the Father and the Son, that can reach out to us also, to fire us with the identical love that will enable all to be drawn into the community of their life.

Christ teaches us to call God ‘Father’ when we pray, because this is precisely what He is to us now. The actual word Jesus uses is even more telling than the translation to which we have become accustomed.
He did not in fact use the word that is the equivalent to our word ‘Father’. Instead, he chose the word Abba. This Aramaic word actually means ‘Daddy’, or at least the word ‘Daddy’ is the closest we can get to the original meaning. Christ’s use of this familiar and homely pet name would have not only been new to his fellow Jews, but also shocking. I do not mean that God was never referred to as Father prior to this time. God had been called Father in the Old Testament on thirteen occasions. However, each time the word was employed, it was used as another word for creator. In other words, God was a Father in so far as he was responsible for His own handicraft, in the sense that we would say Michaelangelo was the Father of his statue Moses because He carved it, or that Hippocrates was the
Father of medicine, or that Herodotus was the Father of all History because he created the literary genre. The traditional word for Father, then, was already loaded with a meaning that Christ wished to supersede. The word Abba or ‘Daddy’, or its equivalent in any language, can only mean one thing.

What is a daddy? Who is a daddy but one who communicates life to his children. There can be no misunderstanding as to what is meant by this word. The nuance is crucial for the new understanding that Christ wished to convey about God. God is now no longer to be understood merely as our Father, the One who created us, but the One who chooses to share His own life with us. This one word sums up the fullness of the Gospel message. That, if we only allow the same Spirit of love that entered into the life of Jesus to enter into our lives too, then we will be able to share not only in His life, but also in His action, in His love of the Father and in the Father’s love of Him.

By faith we know that God is Our Father, but it is only when that faith grows and ripens in prayer that we actually start to experience God’s love progressively entering into us as we pray to Him, in,
through, and with Christ. It is not enough just to accept the bald and undeniable fact that God is a Father. If this truth is to change our lives, which it can, then it must be translated into an experience. This can only happen if we put aside the time daily to create the space in which to allow God to become a loving Father to us. We can prevent this happening, and the truth of the matter is, we do, repeatedly. We never seem to have the time. There is always something else that is more important, something that simply has to be done. Until we come to  come to realise that there is nothing more important than allowing God to be a Father, and let Him enter our lives through prayer, then
we can never be changed deeply and will never be able to change others either. Unless we allow God to touch us with His fatherly love, we may just as well call Him Ra, Jupiter, or Zeus, for all the
practical difference He will make to our lives. This is why Jesus made it clear that the one condition necessary to enter into the Kingdom of God’s love, is to become like a little child, so that He can become a Father to us.

We can all be sentimental about children and romanticise their innocent and simple goodness, but in reality they can be self-centred, greedy little mites. Jesus was not a romantic sentimentalist when it
came to children. He was aware of their shortcomings and makes this quite clear when He castigates the Pharisees for acting like children, squabbling with each other on the street corners. But whatever
the faults of little children, they have one redeeming feature that we cannot resist. They are irresistibly helpless and unable to manage for themselves. They have no illusions about their own strength. If there is anything that becomes too much for them, be it an untieable shoelace or a dribbling nose, they run to Mummy or Daddy. They are utterly and completely dependent on their parents, and they do not care who knows it. This is the characteristic that Jesus is pointing to, when He says we must become as little children if we want to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.

Who is going to belittle themselves by getting down on their knees to pray unless they are first aware that they are in need of help? Without the basic humility of a little child, we cannot even begin. This is
why Jesus says it is as difficult for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of God as it is for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle. Jesus is not just referring to the person with a fat wallet or a big bank
balance; He means people who are rich in natural gifts and abilities too, like the person with brains or flair, with administrative skills or business insight, with charm or artistic brilliance. None of these riches are evil in themselves, but they all have the same danger. They can so easily give a person a false impression of their own strength, their own importance and personal competence. Who needs God’s help when I can do it myself? Riches of any sort obscure this fundamental vision that all
of us need to have quite clearly in mind; namely, that we are basically weak and incapable of achieving anything lasting or worthwhile without God. We are totally dependent on Him for everything. If we
do not see this we are blind, and we will stumble around for a lifetime and never find the right road, never mind enter the Kingdom.

All that I am trying to say revolves around a few simple truths that can alone lead us onwards to the perfect loving union with God, a union which we desire more than anything else. Namely, that the
only power capable of changing us is love, and it is the experience of the Fatherly love of God which alone will radically change us deeply and permanently for the better. Next, our recognition of our own
weakness is the only way we will come to feel our utter need of God’s help. Third, building a life of prayer is the only logical step if we genuinely believe that we are completely dependent upon God. This means turning our lifestyle upside down, if need be, to find the necessary daily time for prayer, otherwise, we are just fooling ourselves and will go nowhere. Prayer is not just a luxury for priests or religious, or people who happen to have spare time on their hands. It is an absolute necessity for everyone who wants to plunge themselves effectively into the mystery of Christ’s life and love, to see, and experience, in, with, and through Him, something of the Love of God.

In this profound mystical contemplation is the prelude to the ecstatic and never-ending bliss that we experience as we are drawn ever more deeply into the infinite loving of God. St Paul tells us that this destiny for which God created us from the beginning is called the Mysterion from the Greek word meaning hidden, secret, or invisible. That is why those who chose to commit themselves to this journey gradually came to be called mystics, because their inner spiritual journey could not be seen by onlookers. It was hidden in Christ who was leadingthem to their ultimate destiny where their love would be brought to perfection in union with the Perfect love of Our Infinite God.

If you would like to follow a free retreat or a course on prayer given by David Torkington, simply click on https://metanoia.org.uk or subscribe at https://essentialistpress.com for our newsletter.