God the Father, uncircumscribed and uncreated, is “always good by nature, so He is always generative by nature . . . [He] represents all paternity and only paternity in relation to a unique Son, who represents all sonship and only sonship in relation to the Father . . . [Thus] when we think of Him as Father and call Him Father, He is understood exclusively as Father and He is related totally to the Son . . . In God only one Person has the affection of a Father for all eternity toward an only Son . . . The Father cannot but think of and have in Himself an exclusive feeling of love toward the Son . . . Being only Father, and the Father of an only Son, He wants . . . nothing but to have the Son with Him, in all His thoughts and feelings, in His whole existence. He does not want to feel alone in His divinity, and for this very reason He maintains His quality as Father . . . The Father does not want to miss out on experiencing the Son’s love for Him, so He unites His feelings as Father toward the Son with the experience of the Son’s love for Him, without thereby confusing Himself with the Son. The Father experiences the Son’s feelings toward Him as a subject, without becoming confused with the Son” (Staniloae, 2012, pp. 82-83).
Thus as adopted children of God, in the only-begotten Son, through the Holy Spirit, who “represents the attentions (or the love) of the Father for the Son and the response of the Son in love, as Son, to the Father” (ibid., p. 25), we both can and should ask ourselves the question: “Who has not himself felt the very feeling that the Son has for the Father?” (ibid., p. 23). What is our personal and immediate response to this question? Inherent in such a question, which was not rhetorical in nature, is the implication that we should all have experienced such a feeling for our Almighty Father, at least at some point or another in our lives. This is what we have been created for, this is how we should be; for as human beings, we were created by and for Our Almighty Father.
Therefore, if we cannot say that we have “felt the very feeling that the Son has for the Father” (ibid., p. 23), the following questions arise:
- Why have we not experienced such feelings toward Our Father, especially given His ceaseless Goodness, Beneficence, Love and Paternity toward us?
- In what ways have we rejected and keep on insistently rejecting Our Father’s Presence in our souls, in the very heart of our souls, when He so intensely desires to come and live, not solely with us and among us, but most especially in us? – making us true children of God; the New Israel; and
- What are we going to do about it, at least in our individual lives, in order to effectively remedy such an anomalous situation?
Reference
Staniloae, D. (2012). The Holy Trinity: In the beginning there was love.
