For the Fourth Sunday of Easter….
Jesus said: “My sheep hear my voice;
I know them, and they follow me. …
No one can take them out of my hand.
My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all,
and no one can take them out of the Father’s hand.
The Father and I are one.”
John 10:27-30
In Baptism, we become children of God, children of the Father. Yet, our loving Father in Heaven understands some of us may still carry some baggage when it comes to understanding or receiving a father’s love. I was one. Yet, over time, I’ve also learned that God is bigger than our own misperceptions of his fatherhood that may have been distorted by hurts in my family of origin.
This text from this Sunday’s Gospel has brought me great healing. I have learned to make these words of Jesus my own: No one can take me out of Jesus’ hand; …no one can take me out of the Father’s hand.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church echoes this theme, giving hope to anyone who has suffered a wounded relationship with an earthly parent.
Parents… are in a way the first representatives of God for man. But this
experience also tells us that human parents are fallible and can disfigure
the face of fatherhood and motherhood … Recall that God transcends
the human distinction between the sexes. He is neither man nor woman.
He also transcends human fatherhood and motherhood, although he is
the origin and standard: no is father as God is Father (CCC, 239).
In Christ and in the Father, I would learn that I am beloved by God. In my ongoing conversion, I’ve been gently re-parented and redirected. God, as Father, the Father almighty—(“I believe in one God, the Father almighty…”)—was bigger and stronger than the hurts and missteps of the past.
God the Father already loved me back then and was ready to help me overcome old hurts to build a new life.
Jesus, I trust in you. Jesus, in you, I can trust the Father who is All Good.
