Who Do You Pray To? It Matters.

Recently I asked a large group of men on retreat, “Raise your hand if you pray—not to Mary, not to St. Joseph, not even to our Lord Jesus, but—to God the Father—specifically.”
Not one hand went up.

Technically, every person who attends the Sacred Liturgy prays to God the Father, particularly during the Our Father.

Yet, the response to the aforementioned question is enlightening.
This response is not atypical, but very common among men.

Yet isn’t the entire point and purpose of Christ’s incarnation, His public ministry, His ransoming us from the consequences of our sin and selfishness, His crucifixion, resurrection, ascension, and the outpouring of His Holy Spirit to reconcile and unite us to God, His Father?

I am often dumbfounded how the most basic, universal, essential truths of our faith become eclipsed, overlooked and hardly ever considered.

My wife attended Catholic school from kindergarten to graduation.
Shortly after we were married, I returned home from daily Mass and asked her, “What is the Eucharist? Is it a symbol of the Lord’s body and blood or is it His body and blood?”
To which she responded, “A symbol.”
Twelve years of Catholic education…

My wife’s understanding of one of the most important, essential, and foundational elements of our Catholic faith was not unique.

A couple of years later I was recruited by our parish priest to lead our parish’s youth ministry.
I discovered that nearly every Catholic kid believed what my wife had believed.
More recently this was confirmed by a 2019 study from Pew Research Center which found that only a third of Catholics believe in the real presence of our Lord in the Eucharist.
How could something so obvious as Our Lord giving us His Body and Blood be overlooked and understood as a mere symbol?

Even more fundamental, essential, and elemental is Jesus’ life-purpose.
Like the Eucharist, this purpose is often overlooked or misunderstood.

What was the primary purpose of Jesus’ brief life on earth?

Common responses are:

To die for our sins; to establish the Church; to open the gates of heaven; to save us from hell; to ransom us from the devil.
Of course, all of these answers are correct.

Yet, why did Jesus die for our sins?
Why did Jesus establish the Church?
Why did Jesus open the gates of heaven?  
Why did Christ save us from hell and ransom us from the devil?

There is one ultimate reason: that we may be one with His Father.

Jesus wants us to pray to God the Father, trust God the Father with our needs, be united to God the Father that we may live with God the Father for all eternity.
Christ became man for the purpose of “Showing us the Father.”

This is a salvation issue.

1. Christ Wants Us to Know God the Father

Our Lord is emphatic that He is the manifestation and revelation of the Father, and that by looking to, and learning from Jesus we are catching the vision of God the Father’s character:

Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? (John 14:9)

If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him. (John 14:7)

And again:

And whoever sees me, sees him who sent me. (John 12:45)

This is the purpose of knowing Jesus—to know and love His Father.

Our Lord wants you to know His Father.

2. Christ Wants Us to Pray To God the Father

Jesus tells us that when we pray, we are to say, “Our Father…”
Jesus desires that we approach the Father—through Him—directly:

And in that day, you shall not ask me anything. Amen, amen I say to you: if you ask the Father anything in my name, he will give it you. (John 16:23)

Our Lord invites us to trust the Father with our needs:

Ask, and it shall be given you: seek, and you shall find: knock, and it shall be opened to you.  For everyone that asketh, receiveth: and he that seeketh, findeth: and to him that knocketh, it shall be opened.  Or what man is there among you, of whom if his son shall ask bread, will he reach him a stone?  Or if he shall ask him a fish, will he reach him a serpent?  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? (Matthew 7:7-11; emphasis added)

Jesus wants you to entrust your needs, wants and entire life to God the Father.

3. Christ Wants Us To be United to God the Father

Jesus prays that we may be fully united to God His Father as He lives in union with His Father:

That they all may be one, as thou, Father, in me, and I in thee; that they also may be one in us; that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. (John 17:21)

If anyone loves me, he shall keep my word. And my Father will love him, and we will come to him, and we will make our dwelling place with him. (John 14:23)

Jesus wants you to be fully united to God the Father.

4. Christ Wants Us To Be With the Father For All Eternity

Jesus identified His Father as His and our ultimate destination:

I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father, except through me. (John 14:6)

I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world: again, I leave the world, and I go to the Father. (John 16:28)

God the Father is our ultimate destiny.
To be one with Him in Heaven, it is imperative that we have a relationship with Him while we are on earth.

Jesus wants you to experience the joy of having God as your loving Father for all eternity.

5. Christ Wants Us to Trust God the Father

The essence of sonship is trust in God the Father.
Jesus desires that we love and trust the Father as He does.

St. Paul attests to this by saying:
For whosoever are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. (Rom 8:14)

If you are led by God’s Spirit and have God’s Spirit in you then you are a son of God the Father.

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.  (Rom 8:15-16)

Again, those who call God “Abba, Father” are those who are truly filled with the Holy Spirit.

Therefore, you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ. (Galatians 4:7)

The slave fears and lacks trust and therefore flees from the Father.
The son trusts the Father and therefore remains with and in Him.

What’s At Stake

Why do we fail to approach and address God the Father?
Could it be because fathers who ought to represent God the Father instead have represented the father of lies – thus conditioning our perception of God the Father?
Could it be that we believe the Father to be too distant, too severe?

Jesus’ greatest condemnation for the Jews was that they did not know the Father:

They said therefore to him: Where is thy Father? Jesus answered: Neither me do you know, nor my Father: if you did know me, perhaps you would know my Father also. (John 8:19)

I and the Father are one. (John 10:30)

If I had not done among them the works that no other man hath done, they would not have sin; but now they have both seen and hated both me and my Father. (John 15:24).

John the Evangelist confirms:

No one who denies the Son also has the Father. Whoever confesses the Son, also has the Father. (1 John 2:23).

The most grievous of sins is not knowing and worse rejecting God the Father.

I recently met a man who had a deep-seated father wound.
He confessed to a priest that he distanced himself from God the Father because of his distanced human father.
In the confessional, as he repented of his sins, he cried out, “Abba, Father, you are my Father.”
He related that in that moment all fear of the Heavenly Father ceased and it was as if he was born anew with a great confidence.
He is forever a transformed man, who no longer fears God, but trusts that His Heavenly Father is good and can be trusted—always.

Christ became the son of men that the son of men may become sons of God the Father.
Our Lord commands us to Learn from Him (See Matthew 11:29) so that we may learn how to live in relationship with His Father.
This was and is His primary purpose: to make us one with the Father as He is one with the Father.

True religion is to do what Christ did and does: have an intimate, trusting, self-giving relationship with God the Father.

If you are truly filled with the Spirit of God, you cry out “Abba, Father.”

Devin Schadt | Executive Director of the Fathers of St. Joseph

Ite ad Joseph