The Father: Being His Child

Before Jesus: sketches of a Father God

The fatherhood of God is not an invention of the New Testament. The Old Testament senses it on several occasions, without ever delivering its ultimate depth. God presents Himself as the Father of His people through Moses: "Israel is my son, my firstborn" (Exodus 4:22)^[3]. The Psalms sing the fatherly tenderness of God: "As a father hath compassion on his children, so hath the Lord compassion on them that fear him" (Psalm 102 (103):13)^[4]. The prophet Hosea makes God speak this overwhelming word: "When Israel was a child, I loved him: and I called my son out of Egypt" (Hosea 11:1)^[5]. Isaiah, finally, dares this confidence: "For thou art our father... thou, O Lord, art our father, our redeemer, from everlasting is thy name" (Isaiah 63:16)^[6].

These images of fatherhood remain collective and restrained. In the Jewish tradition, God is the Father of Israel, more rarely the Father of an individual man, and He is never addressed directly by this name in an intimate manner. "The name of God the Father had been revealed to none," observes Tertullian at the end of the second century; "when Moses himself asked God who He was, he heard another name"^[7]. Israel prays to the God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob, to the Holy One of Israel, to the Almighty; it does not spontaneously pray "Abba".

The Catechism sums up this point precisely:

"The term 'God the Father' had never been revealed to anyone. [...] This name has been revealed to us in the Son, for this name implies the new name 'Father.'" Tertullian, De Oratione, ch. 3, quoted in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 2779^[8]

Jesus calls God "Abba", in a manner judged without parallel

The decisive leap is made by Jesus. According to the famous thesis, since debated and nuanced, of Joachim Jeremias, the use of the Aramaic word Abba on the lips of Jesus in the Gospels would be without known parallel in Second Temple Judaism^[9]. Abba is the Aramaic word of filial intimacy, often rendered as papa, by which a Jewish child addresses his father. Yet Jesus uses this word as if it were His customary name for God. At Gethsemane, the Gospel according to Saint Mark preserves the raw Aramaic formula, a sign of a saying so characteristic of Jesus that it was handed down untranslated:

"Abba, Father, all things are possible to thee: remove this chalice from me, but not what I will, but what thou wilt." Gospel according to Saint Mark, 14:36^[10]

The Catechism draws the dogmatic consequences of this singularity: "He distinguished his sonship from that of his disciples by never saying 'our Father' except to order them: 'You, therefore, pray like this: Our Father'"^[11]. Jesus prays to His Father. When He teaches His disciples to pray our Father, He opens to them, and this is the mystery, the possibility of entering into this filiation which was initially His own.

The gift of the Spirit and the boldness to pray

This opening is not a mere moral teaching; it is made possible by an ontological gift: the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. Saint Paul formulates its grammar in two parallel passages, no doubt among the densest of the New Testament on this subject:

"For you have not received the spirit of bondage again in fear; but you have received the spirit of adoption of sons, whereby we cry: Abba (Father). For the Spirit himself giveth testimony to our spirit, that we are the sons of God." Saint Paul, Letter to the Romans 8:15-16^[12]

"And because you are sons, God hath sent the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying: Abba, Father." Saint Paul, Letter to the Galatians 4:6^[13]

The Greek word used by Paul, krazomen, "we cry", is not incidental: it evokes a shout, an almost physical cry. It is not the soul alone that says Abba; it is the Holy Spirit within it who cries this name, because this name overflows the natural capacity of man.

This is why the Catechism opens the fourth part on Christian prayer with this mention:

"To be in touch with Christ, we must first have been touched by the Holy Spirit. It is he who comes to meet us and kindles faith in us." Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 683^[14]

Without this Spirit, one may still believe in a creator God, just, distant; but one cannot say Abba. Christian filiation is not a religious sentiment that man produces; it is a received reality, a child's voice placed within him by the Spirit of the Son.

"Behold what manner of charity the Father hath bestowed upon us"

The first disciple to grasp the unheard-of newness of this filiation is Saint John. Toward the end of his life, in his first letter, he sets down a cry of wonder that sums up all of Christianity:

"Behold what manner of charity the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called, and should be the sons of God." Saint John, First Letter 3:1^[15]

The Greek expression is stronger than the English translation suggests. Saint John literally says "that we should be called the sons of God, and so we are" (kai esmen). The parenthesis is no ornament; it is a protest against any reading that would make filiation a mere metaphor. We are sons of God, in truth, in a reality of being, by grace, because of the blood of Christ and the gift of the Spirit.

This adoption is not an external juridical promotion, as Roman adoption was, in which a son was chosen to bear a name; it is a real participation in the filial life of the Only-Begotten Son. Saint Peter will dare to say that Christians become "partakers of the divine nature" (2 Peter 1:4). Saint Athanasius will formulate the famous maxim:

"For the Son of God became man so that we might become God." Saint Athanasius, De Incarnatione Verbi, ch. 54, § 3; PG 25, 192B^[16]

Saint Thomas Aquinas and adoptive filiation as grace

Saint Thomas Aquinas specified, in the Summa Theologiae, the exact nature of this adoption. He carefully distinguishes the natural filiation of the Word, which is consubstantial, eternal, by generation, from the adoptive filiation of the Christian, which is participated. But this participation is not fictitious: it brings the baptized into a real relation to the Father.

Saint Thomas specifies that adoption is the common work of the whole Trinity, but appropriated to the Father as its author, to the Son as its exemplar, to the Holy Spirit who impresses this filial likeness upon us^[17]. Adopted man therefore receives, by sanctifying grace, what the Son possesses by nature. He is not another Christ in the sense of being the incarnate Word; but, in Christ and through Christ, he truly becomes a child of the same Father.

The Catechism takes up this doctrine in simple terms:

"The Spirit heals and transforms those who receive him by conforming them to the Son of God. The fruit of the sacramental life is that the Spirit of adoption deifies (cf. 2 Pet 1:4) the faithful by uniting them vitally to the Only Son, the Savior." Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 1129^[18]

Baptism, sacrament of the new birth

This adoption is not a purely interior affair; it is sacramental. Baptism is the sacrament which, by placing an outward sign, water accompanied by the Trinitarian words, effects the interior gift of the Spirit that makes sons. Saint Cyril of Jerusalem, in his fourth-century Mystagogic Catecheses, declares this marvel:

"Now that you have become partakers of Christ, you are rightly called 'christs,' and it is of you that God said: 'Touch not my christs.'" Saint Cyril of Jerusalem, Mystagogic Catecheses, III, 1; PG 33, 1088A^[19]

The Catechism comments:

"We can adore the Father because he has caused us to be reborn to his life by adopting us as his children in his only Son: through Baptism, he incorporates us into the Body of his Christ..." Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 2782^[20]

This is why Saint Cyprian of Carthage, as early as the third century, could write this luminous formula, which the Catechism quotes almost word for word fifteen centuries later:

"The new man, reborn and restored to his God by grace, says first of all 'Father!', because he has now become a son." Saint Cyprian of Carthage, De Dominica oratione, § 9; PL 4, 525A^[21]

The theological order is clear: we are not sons because we call God Father; we call God Father because we have become sons, through baptism and the Spirit. Prayer is the consequence of ontology, not the reverse.

The idol of the distant judge God

A major difficulty of the spiritual life is not doubting that God exists: it is doubting that He is Father. Western culture, marked by centuries of Jansenist or Stoic images of a watching, severe God who keeps accounts of faults, has left in many souls a distorted representation. The Catechism insists precisely on this point:

"Before we make this first movement of the Lord's Prayer our own, it is not useless to purify our hearts humbly of certain false images 'of this world.' The purification of the heart concerns paternal or maternal images, stemming from our personal and cultural history, and influencing our relationship with God. God our Father transcends the categories of the created world. To impose our own ideas in this area upon him, whether we transpose them onto him or against him, would be to fabricate idols, to be adored or demolished." Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 2779^[22]

The feeling of a distant God is an instrument of evil. The same intuition is found, for example, in the pen of Luisa Piccarreta, in the Book of Heaven, when Jesus says to her:

"Believing that we are distant is the mortal instrument that kills the creature's love for its Creator. Distance breaks friendship. Who can love and know a distant Being, or hope for anything from Him? No one." Jesus to Luisa Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, volume 28, 30 November 1930^[23]

The practical unbelief of our time is almost never an articulated philosophical unbelief; it is, upstream, an unbelief in fatherhood. The first gesture of Christian conversion is therefore a correction of the image: letting go of the distant judge God, welcoming the Father revealed by Jesus.

Servile fear and filial fear

Catholic tradition distinguishes, since the Fathers, two forms of the fear of God. Saint Augustine, Saint Thomas Aquinas and Saint Francis de Sales teach it with a precision worth recovering.

Servile fear has its provisional place: it can awaken a sleeping sinner. But it is meant to let itself be purified by filial fear, which is, tradition says, one of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. The Catechism specifies:

"This gratuitous gift of adoption requires on our part continual conversion and a new life. ... A humble and trusting heart that makes us 'return to being like children' (Mt 18:3)." Catechism of the Catholic Church, §§ 2784-2785^[24]

"Lift up your eyes to the Father": Saint Ambrose

No patristic text expresses this recovered dignity better than this passage of Saint Ambrose on the Our Father, found in his De Sacramentis:

"O man, you did not dare to lift up your face to heaven, you lowered your eyes to the earth, and suddenly you received the grace of Christ: all your sins have been forgiven you. From a wicked servant you have become a good son. Lift up therefore your eyes to the Father who has redeemed you through His Son and say: Our Father." Saint Ambrose of Milan, De Sacramentis, V, 19; PL 16, 450C^[25]

This passage is quoted verbatim by the Catechism at § 2783. It says in a few lines the whole of Christian conversion of outlook. Man is no longer a slave who lowers his eyes; he is a son who dares to lift up his face. The prayer of the Our Father is not a recited formula: it is the act by which the filial dignity received at baptism becomes conscious, living, operative.

Saint John Chrysostom, in the same tradition, observes:

"You cannot call the God of all goodness your Father if you keep a cruel and inhuman heart; for in that case you no longer have in you the mark of the goodness of the heavenly Father." Saint John Chrysostom, Homilies on Saint Matthew, 7, 14; PG 51, 44B^[26]

Saying Father commits the whole of life: to a heavenly Father corresponds a son's heart. Without this correspondence, the word remains empty.

A young Carmelite discovers a new way

The most striking development of filial spirituality in the nineteenth century is, without question, the work of Saint Therese of the Child Jesus (1873-1897). An obscure Carmelite who died at twenty-four, proclaimed Doctor of the Church by Saint John Paul II in 1997^[27], she gave back to the whole Church the evidence of a path of holiness accessible to all, precisely because it is filial.

In the famous passage of Manuscript C, written a few weeks before her death, Therese recounts how she sought, and found, a short road to God:

"I have always desired to be a saint, but alas! I have always found, when I compared myself to the saints, that there is between them and me the same difference as between a mountain whose summit is lost in the heavens and an obscure grain of sand trodden underfoot by passers-by; instead of being discouraged, I said to myself: God cannot inspire unrealizable desires, so I can, despite my littleness, aspire to holiness; to grow greater is impossible, I must bear with myself such as I am with all my imperfections; but I want to seek the means of going to Heaven by a little way, very straight, very short, an entirely new little way." Saint Therese of Lisieux, Manuscript C, f. 2v-3r^[28]

"The lift: your arms, O Jesus!"

The discovery of Therese is to have understood that it is not necessary to become great in order to reach God. On the contrary: one must accept being carried, like a child whom his father carries. She then develops a comparison borrowed from the modernity of her time:

"We are in a century of inventions; now it is no longer any use climbing the steps of a staircase; for the rich, a lift replaces it to advantage. I too would like to find a lift to raise me up to Jesus, for I am too little to climb the rough stairway of perfection. So I searched in the holy books for the sign of the lift, the object of my desire, and I read these words uttered by Eternal Wisdom itself: If anyone is VERY LITTLE, let him come to me. So I came, sensing that I had found what I was looking for." Saint Therese of Lisieux, Manuscript C, f. 3r^[29]

And the sentence closing this page has become one of the most quoted in all Catholic spirituality:

"The lift that must raise me to Heaven is your arms, O Jesus! For that I have no need to grow greater; on the contrary, I must remain little, I must become littler still." Saint Therese of Lisieux, Manuscript C, f. 3r^[30]

Remaining little: a way for all

Therese does not invent a spirituality of self-contempt or narcissistic diminishment. The little way is a way of boldness: daring to believe that holiness is a gift, not a conquest; daring to let oneself be carried; daring to ask God, like a child, for what one could never obtain by one's efforts. In a letter of 21 June 1897, a few months before her death, she writes to Fr. Bellier, who thought himself unworthy:

"You want, I know, to become great through love... That is my ambition too, but looking at my weakness... I had the boldness to ask God to teach me to do so by a short way, by an entirely new way. Ah! I would like to find a means of going to Heaven by a little way that is entirely straight, entirely short, an entirely new little way." Saint Therese of Lisieux, Letter to Fr. Bellier, 21 June 1897^[31]

This way does not oppose the classical way of the mysticism of the great Carmelites, Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross; it rejoins it from within. Poverty is no longer an obstacle, but a condition. More still: recognized poverty becomes the very matter of holiness. Saint Pius X dared to say to a cardinal who presented Therese's writings to him in 1907: "She is the greatest saint of modern times"^[32].

The testament of Therese: her posthumous mission

In her Last Conversations, Therese confides to her sister Pauline (Mother Agnes) the mission she wishes to accomplish from heaven. This saying, spoken on 17 July 1897, is one of the most striking spiritual testaments in Christian history:

"I want to spend my Heaven doing good on earth. [...] I am beginning my mission of making God loved as I love Him, of giving my little way to souls." Saint Therese of Lisieux, Last Conversations, 17 July 1897^[33]

The century that followed confirmed this promise. The little way of Therese is today taught as a sure path by the ordinary magisterium, and many saints of the twentieth century, Sister Faustina, Charles de Foucauld, Edith Stein, John Paul II himself, recognized in it an essential grammar of the spiritual life.

A prayer dictated by the Only-Begotten Son

The Our Father is not a prayer like the others. It is, says Tertullian in the formula that became classic, the summary of the whole Gospel:

"The summary of the whole Gospel: such is the Our Father. This prayer, dictated by Christ Himself, is the most perfect of prayers." Tertullian, De Oratione, ch. 1; PL 1, 1153A^[34]

This importance is not exaggerated. When the disciples ask Jesus to teach them to pray, as John the Baptist taught his disciples to pray, Jesus does not give them a spiritual technique, but a prayer. And this prayer, on reading, is entirely filial: it is the prayer of a son to his Father. Saint Thomas Aquinas, in the Summa Theologiae, speaks of it as "the most perfect of prayers", because it comes "from the Author of grace" and contains "all that one should desire"^[35].

Seven petitions for seven filial dispositions

The Our Father is composed of seven petitions which tradition divides into two groups: the first three concern God (thy Name, thy Kingdom, thy Will), the last four concern us (forgive us, give us, deliver us...). This structure is no accident: it reflects the very order of charity, which loves God for Himself before loving oneself.

Each petition is therefore, at once, a petition and an education of the heart. Praying the Our Father slowly, the Christian trains himself to think, to will, to hope like a child of the Father.

Saint Cyprian: "Do not say Father if you are not a child"

The oldest and deepest commentary on the Our Father to have come down to us is no doubt the De Dominica oratione of Saint Cyprian of Carthage, written about 250. A martyr bishop of North Africa, Cyprian unfolds in it a theology of filial prayer that remains unequaled. He begins with this observation:

"What indulgence will the Father not show when He hears His child praying! What joy, when He recognizes in his words the sentiments of the Son!" Saint Cyprian of Carthage, De Dominica oratione, § 3; PL 4, 521^[36]

But he immediately follows with an uncompromising demand:

"What pride in this name of 'our' Father, if we ourselves do not live as sons! We must remember, when we call God 'our Father,' that we must behave as sons of God." Saint Cyprian of Carthage, De Dominica oratione, § 11; PL 4, 526B^[37]

For Cyprian, filiation is not a word; it commits one to live as the Only-Begotten Son lives. The Our Father is therefore both a received prayer and a program of conversion. The Catechism of the Catholic Church will devote to this prayer, since 1992, a quarter of its fourth part (§§ 2759-2865), a sign of its central importance in the transmission of the faith.

Marcel Van: calling God "Papa Good God"

The spiritual childhood theorized by Therese found, in the twentieth century, a striking embodiment in Marcel Van (1928-1959), a young Vietnamese Redemptorist whose Colloques with Jesus, Mary and Therese record an astonishing intimacy with the Father. Marcel addresses God by familiarly calling Him "Papa Good God", an expression which, to the theological ear, may surprise, but which is only a childlike equivalent of the Pauline Abba.

Jesus, in the Colloques, expressly approves this familiarity:

"There are many who only know how to listen to what I say without daring to converse quite simply with me like children, on the pretext that it is not fitting... Tell them well that I very willingly listen to ordinary conversations, even the simplest, and that I take pleasure in hearing them. That is all I expect from souls who love me." Jesus to Marcel Van, Colloques, n. 327 (22 March 1946)^[38]

Marcel is not an extraordinary mystic in the spectacular sense; he is a child speaking to his Father. This simplicity is the modern face of the Theresian way.

Gabrielle Bossis: "The Father lends Himself to the inventions of His little child"

On the lay side, Gabrielle Bossis (1874-1950), a French actress and mystic whose first volume of Him and Me, published in her lifetime in 1948, bears the imprimatur of the bishop of Nantes, collected in Him and Me interior words that extend the same intuition. Christ is said to have told her, on 11 February 1938:

"A tender Father lends Himself to the inventions of His little child. Say, like that little girl to her father: 'Come near me.'" Jesus to Gabrielle Bossis, Him and Me, n. 385 (11 February 1938)^[39]

And, on 3 February 1939:

"Always keep the simplicity of a little child, a boundless trust." Jesus to Gabrielle Bossis, Him and Me, n. 612 (3 February 1939)^[40]

And again:

"Even if the little child does not succeed, the Father looks at him, pleased with his efforts." Jesus to Gabrielle Bossis, Him and Me, n. 655 (24 April 1939)^[41]

These words are no syrup; they are the practical consequence of the dogma. If God is truly Father, then the quality of His gaze upon His children is that of a tender father, not of a severe examiner. The Father sees the effort, not only the result. This is what Therese of Lisieux already said: "As one whom the mother caresseth, so will I comfort you"^[42].

Charles de Foucauld: "Father, I abandon myself to Thee"

The most stripped expression of twentieth-century filial prayer is no doubt the Prayer of Abandonment of Saint Charles de Foucauld (1858-1916), taken from the Meditations on the Gospel concerning the principal virtues which he composed at the end of 1896 at Akbes (Syria), when he was a Trappist under the name of Brother Marie-Alberic, following a meditation on the words of Christ on the cross: "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit" (Luke 23:46)^[43].

"Father, I abandon myself into thy hands; do with me what thou wilt. Whatever thou mayest do, I thank thee: I am ready for all, I accept all. Let only thy will be done in me, and in all thy creatures. I wish no more than this, O Lord. Into thy hands I commend my soul; I offer it to thee, O Lord, with all the love of my heart, for I love thee, and it is my need of love to give myself, to surrender myself into thy hands, without reserve, with infinite confidence, for thou art my Father." Saint Charles de Foucauld, Meditations on the Gospel concerning the principal virtues, meditation on Luke 23:46 (Akbes, 1896)^[44]

Canonized by Pope Francis on 15 May 2022^[45], Charles de Foucauld showed that a single word, Father, can sustain a whole life, even to martyrdom in the desert of Tamanrasset on 1 December 1916.

Dom Vital Lehodey: Holy Abandonment

On a more systematic register, Dom Vital Lehodey (1857-1948), a French Cistercian abbot, published in 1919 the masterly book Holy Abandonment, which remains today one of the most rigorous syntheses of filial spirituality in the Catholic tradition. Lehodey carefully distinguishes quietist abandonment (which would dispense from spiritual combat) from evangelical abandonment (which presupposes the full activity of freedom). He defines holy abandonment thus:

"Holy abandonment is the way of spiritual childhood, the path of trust and total abandonment. It consists in delivering oneself fully into the hands of God, like a child in the arms of its mother, but without ever ceasing to will and to act according to the known will of God." Dom Vital Lehodey, Holy Abandonment, Paris, 1948^[46]

Quoting Bishop Gay, he recalls that this way is "more perfect than the love of sufferings; for nothing immolates the soul to God more than leaving oneself, in all things, to His free will"^[47].

A book become a classic

Fr. Jean d'Elbee (1892-1982), a French priest of the diocese of Paris, published in 1969 a book intended for religious sisters who had requested its writing: Believing in Love. In forty years the work became one of the best-sellers of French-language Catholic spirituality, translated into a dozen languages and sold in more than 200,000 copies^[48].

The central theme of the book is very simple: the principal cause of our spiritual sadness, discouragement and stagnation is that we do not believe enough in God's love for us. Fr. d'Elbee writes these lines, which have remained famous:

"Believe in Love. Believe in it obstinately, heroically. Believe in it when you fall. Believe in it when you rise. Believe in it when you feel nothing. Believe in it when you feel everything. The poorer you are, the more you must believe in Love." Fr. Jean d'Elbee, Believing in Love^[49]

This "believing in love" is no sentimental slogan; it is the practical formula of filiation. As long as one doubts being loved by a Father, one remains spiritually orphaned. To believe in love is to enter into the filial dignity given at baptism.

The sickness of distrust

D'Elbee diagnoses a widespread spiritual sickness: distrust. Many souls pray, receive Communion, go to confession, yet remain inwardly tense, because they dare not believe that God loves them as they are. This distrust is, he says, "more offensive to God than the faults themselves"^[50], for it denies the very face that God revealed in Jesus.

The remedy is neither heroic effort nor sharper introspection; it is the repeated filial act: "I believe in thy love, my Father." This simple act, made each time distrust rises, is, for d'Elbee, the practical summit of the Christian life.

"How much more will your Father in heaven"

The prayer of petition, sometimes judged less noble than praise or adoration, recovers its proper meaning when read in the grammar of filiation. If God is truly Father, then asking is not begging; it is exercising one's quality as a child. Jesus teaches it explicitly:

"Ask, and it shall be given you: seek, and you shall find: knock, and it shall be opened to you... What man is there among you, of whom if his son shall ask bread, will he reach him a stone? If you then being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children: how much more will your Father who is in heaven, give good things to them that ask him!" Jesus, Gospel according to Saint Matthew 7:7-11^[51]

The argument is a fortiori: if a human father, despite his limits, gives to his son, how much more will a heavenly Father, whose love is without measure, give His children what they ask. Doubt about this dynamic always betrays, upstream, a doubt about fatherhood.

Saint Augustine: praying long means learning to receive

Why then does God, who knows our needs before we speak, ask us to pray at length? Saint Augustine answers, in his famous Letter to Proba:

"If God wants us to pray to Him, it is not to learn of our desires, which He cannot fail to know; it is so that our desire may be exercised through prayer, to become capable of receiving what He is preparing to give us." Saint Augustine, Letter 130 to Proba, ch. 8, § 17; PL 33, 500^[52]

Prolonged prayer of petition is therefore no bargaining with God; it is an education of the child's heart. The Father sometimes lets us wait not to make us languish, but to enlarge the capacity to receive.

The Father knows better than we do what we need

Filial petition does not exclude realism: a child may ask his father for what would do him no good, and the wise father refuses. Saint Augustine teaches this with his customary lucidity in the same passage, and Jesus Himself prayed at Gethsemane with this twofold movement: "Let this chalice pass... nevertheless, not what I will, but what thou wilt" (Mark 14:36). The ripest prayer of petition therefore includes this filial clause: "if it be thy good pleasure." This is what Saint Therese of Lisieux expresses in one of her letters: "I will what Jesus wills"^[53].

"Thy will be done"

The third petition of the Our Father is, in many respects, the summit of filial life. Asking that the will of the Father be done is consenting to become like the Son, whose whole mission the Gospel sums up thus: "My meat is to do the will of him that sent me" (John 4:34)^[54].

This petition does not consist only in passively accepting what God sends; it is, more deeply, the active union of the human will with the divine will. Saint Francis de Sales, in the Treatise on the Love of God (1616), shows that this union is the summit to which the soul spontaneously aspires when it truly loves:

"Thus, by dint of delighting in God, one becomes conformed to God, and our will is transformed into that of the divine Majesty." Saint Francis de Sales, Treatise on the Love of God, book VIII, ch. 1^[55]

At the heart of all Catholic spirituality: doing the will of the Father

This spirituality of the will of the Father runs through the whole Catholic tradition. Saint Therese of the Child Jesus sums it up: "I will what Jesus wills." Saint Faustina, in her Diary, writes: "From today on I am doing the will of God, everywhere, always, in everything"^[56]. And the spirituality of the Divine Will revealed to the Servant of God Luisa Piccarreta (1865-1947), whose cause of beatification received the Nulla Osta of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith in June 2024^[57], extends this tradition by proposing a still higher gift: not only doing the will of the Father, but living in His will, as the Only-Begotten Son lives it in the bosom of the Father.

This articulation between filiation and the divine will is no novelty; it is the logical fulfillment of the doctrine of adoption. If God makes us sons in the Son, then the highest prayer of the son is that of the Only-Begotten Son Himself: "Not my will, but thine."

To explore the spirituality of the Divine Will further, see the dedicated article

Filial life is not only a doctrine; it is a rhythm. Catholic tradition proposes a few simple gestures which, repeated each day, expand filial consciousness and make it operative. They are almost all suggested by the Our Father, unfolded in ordinary life.

In the morning (Before all activity, tell the Father about your day.) Saint Peter Julian Eymard recommended this interior act of offering from the morning: offering one's day to the Father for His glory, for acceptance of His will and the salvation of souls^[58]. It is, in a few words, the Our Father condensed.

In the course of the day (When worry, irritation or a fault arises, turn inwardly back to the Father.) Saint Therese of Lisieux did so through brief liftings of the heart. Marcel Van addressed to "Papa Good God" all that he lived. Pope Francis gave this practice back the name of ejaculatory prayer^[59]: a very brief dart that reaches the Father without breaking the activity in progress.

In the evening (Before sleeping, reread the day as a child rereads his day to his father.) Ignatius of Loyola codified this practice in the spiritual examen, whose aim is less to tally faults than to recognize where the Father acted and to give Him thanks. The gesture is not judicial; it is filial.

After a fall (Do not move away, but return at once.) This is the great lesson of the parable of the prodigal child (Luke 15): what saves the son is not that he becomes pure; it is that he rises and returns to his father. Saint Therese wrote:

"If I had committed all possible crimes, I would always keep the same confidence; I feel that all this multitude of offenses would be like a drop of water cast into a blazing furnace." Saint Therese of Lisieux, Manuscript C, f. 36v^[60]

This confidence is no presumption; it is faith in the love of the Father. This is precisely what Fr. d'Elbee said: "Believe in it when you fall."

• Making reparation and consoling Jesus (previous lesson of module 4, prayer).
• The Holy Spirit: the charisms (next lesson of module 4).
• The Divine Will (to extend filial life into the gift proper to Luisa Piccarreta).
• The Our Father: the prayer of the Lord (to enter further into the commentary on the seven petitions).
• Abandonment to the will of God (for the active dimension of filial trust).

Go deeper with Via Divina (This article summarizes a lesson of the basic Via Divina formation, module 4 lesson 30, The Father: Being His Child. To go further and receive the complete formation, discover the lesson in Via Divina.)