God-is-Father. If God is all-powerful, He is also all-loving. If with His hands He holds the world, with those same hands He takes and protects me.
By night, He watches over my sleep and, by day, He accompanies me wherever I go. When people complain saying “I am alone in the world,” the Father responds “Do not be afraid, for I am with you” (Is 41:10). When individuals lament, saying “No one loves me,” the Father answers “I love you” (Is 43:4). He is closer to me than my own shadow. He takes better care of me than the most loving mother. There is nowhere I can become lost, for wherever I go, He goes with me.
Furthermore, it is a freely given love. The fact that He loves me does not depend on whether or not I deserve it, whether I am just or unjust. The Father loves me freely. He understands me because He knows very well of what soil I am made, and He forgives me much more easily than I forgive myself.
I am not, then, the product of an assembly line. I am the carefully designed work of an artisan. I was conceived in eternity by Love and I was born in time through Love. From the beginning and forever, I am freely loved by my Father.
In his own flesh, Jesus experienced that God is not, above all, fear. He is love. He is not primarily justice but mercy; nor is he, Your Majesty, Your Excellency, Your Holiness, but pardon, care, nearness, tenderness, solicitude. There is a need to call him by a different name so, from now on, he will not be called Yahweh, but Father, because he has and does what an ideal father in this world has and does: he is always near; he understands, pardons, cares, protects, and encourages.
After experiencing what Jesus experienced, there was no other way but to call him by the name which encompasses what in this world is most worthy of love: Father. And so, the First Commandment is changed in some way in that, from now on, it does not consist in loving God, but in allowing oneself to be loved by God since only those who are loved can love in the same way that light cannot but shine and illuminate. It was an entirely new world that brought about the greatest revolution in the homeland of the spirit.
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the merciful Father and the God who gives every possible encouragement” (2 Cor 1:3).
Extracted from the books ´Sensing your hidden presence´ and ´The poor one of Nazareth´ by F. Ignacio Larrañaga, OFM
