Our Father, Our Identity Fr. Hugh Barbour, O. Praem.

 

Our Father, Our Identity

Fr. Hugh Barbour, O. Praem.

No one needs to point out that we live in an age of “identity” politics, of questions of sex and what is called “gender.” In our Congress there is even a move to eliminate the names father, mother, son, and daughter in favor of generic expressions that indicate little of a human identity rooted in nature.

Well, fortunately for us, should we have any doubts about how to think and speak about who we are, we have the permanently normative language of divine revelation to guide us. We know that from the beginning we were created in the image and likeness of God. The sacred scriptures tell us that he is more than simply our Creator and Maker; he desires to be called our Father and even, in his Son made one of us by his incarnation, our Friend.

Pay attention to the Nicene Creed we recite at Holy Mass on Sundays and solemnities. We profess that the God is the “Father Almighty,” and that in the unity of one godhead he has a Son, who was “begotten before all ages, God from God, Light from light, True God from true God.”

So we believe that deep in the deepest heart of reality there is an eternal Father who perpetually begets his Son, and calls him his Son, and takes such a delight in him as his beloved, that his happiness consists in a third Person, the Holy Spirit, in whom he and his Son love each other and everything else...