CALL GOD ‘FATHER’ BECAUSE TRULY HE IS!
Saint Josemaría wrote that the “sense of divine filiation” is the foundation of our spiritual life.
- Note that it is not “divine filiation” but rather the “sense” of our divine filiation, that is the realization of our condition as God’s children for it is not enough to be such, but rather we need to realize we are children of God, so that our life takes on that “sense,” be lived according to this objective truth.
- With this solid foundation, the truth of our divine filiation then becomes an active reality, with specific repercussions in our lives.
To strengthen this consideration of our objective condition as God’s children, it is good to enter more deeply into that reality with our mind and heart.
- With our mind, first, by meditating in our prayer on the passages in Scripture that speak about God’s fatherhood, about our filiation, and about the life of God’s children.
- With our heart we can go more deeply into the reality that we are God’s children by having trusting recourse to God the Father, abandoning ourselves in his Love. We can stir up our filial trust, with or without words, by always trying to be aware of his Love for us. One way of doing so is to turn to him with short invocations or aspirations. Saint Josemaría suggested: “Call him ‘Father’ many times a day and tell him—alone, in your heart—that you love him, that you adore him, that you feel proud and strong because you are his child.”
- We can also make use of some short prayer that can help us to confront each day with the security of realizing we are children of God, or to end it with a prayer of thanksgiving, contrition and hope.
- Pope Francis suggested this prayer to young people: “Lord, I thank you for loving me; I am sure that you love me; help me to be in love with my own life! Not with my faults, that need to be corrected, but with life itself, which is a great gift, for it is a time to love and to be loved.” Cfr. New Mediterraneans (I) in http://opusdei.org/en-us/document/new-mediterraneans-i-that-first-prayer-of-a-child/#_ftn18
- “If we frequently consider this truth – I am a child of God – if we go deeper into its meaning, our day will be filled with peace, serenity and joy. We will make a resolution to rely on God our Father, on whom everything depends when difficulties and disappointments arise, and when sometimes we seem to be fighting an uphill battle (cfr. J. Lucas, We are Children of God, Madrid, 1973).”