Ad Patrem: Going to the Father As adopted children of God, we pray ad Patrem, “to the Father.” Are your eyes on the Father? Saint Cyril of Jerusalem preaches: “Raise your eyes to the Father who has begotten you through baptism, to the Father who has redeemed you through his Son, and say: ‘Our Father.’” Saint Ignatius of Antioch heard a voice welling up within him, saying, “Come to the Father.”13 In the Mass, we ceaselessly pray ad Patrem. Nearly every collect at the beginning of Mass prays to God the Father, addressing him: “Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.” We pray to the Father through Jesus, because he taught us to pray to his Father. Blessed Columba Marmion writes of Jesus: “All his divine personal life is to be ad Patrem; in giving himself to us, he gives himself as he is, seeking in all things his Father and the glory of his Father; and so, our entire turning towards the Father is wrought when we receive the Word with faith, confidence, and love. What we ought to ask and constantly seek after is that all our thoughts, all our aspirations, all our desires, all our activity, should tend, by the grace of our filiation and by love, to our Heavenly Father in his Son Jesus.”14 Every life has direction, is going somewhere. Where are you going right now? Is it the way you want to go? Do you want to go to the Father? If so, Christ is the Way! Christ says to us, I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me (Jn 14:6). Saint Augustine preaches, “It’s better to limp and stagger on the way than to walk strongly and vigorously off the way.” 15 If two men want to go from New York City to Miami, the one walking south on foot will be doing much better than the one on a train to Montreal. We want to go from earth to heaven—and Christ is the only way. 19
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