Come and See by Maree Sobolewski

We may have an intellectual knowledge of God as Father without having experienced him as such. The focus of this essay is on perceiving God as a relational Father, rather than as a distant presence whom we seldom think about or fear.

Jesus and the Scriptures reveal that God desires with all his heart to be a loving Father to us. Knowledge and experience of God as a loving Father draw our lives into his heart, where we experience a secure, personal relationship built on love.

“Come and see” are the invitational words of Jesus in chapter one of John’s gospel. The psalmist in Psalm 34:8 expresses it as, “Taste and see that the Lord is good.” Jesus is inviting us to come and follow him to discover what a wonderful Father our God is and to live as his sons and daughters. The name “Father” designates relationships and children. Created in the image of a Trinitarian God, we were made for relationship with the Father through, with, and in Jesus.

Jesus’s life and sacrificial self-giving mirrored his Father’s compassionate love for each of us. In doing so he shattered any false stereotypes of our Father, including those of a distant, angry, or judgmental God. He and the Father are identical in character. As he told Phillip, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). Fulfilling his Father’s will (6:38), he revealed he came to not only redeem us but to reunite us with our Father. As we read in Galatians 4:4-5, “God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, so that he might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons.” Jesus’s sacrificial love restores our ability to hear and personally experience God as our Father through the rebirth of our spirit, the gift of grace and the Holy Spirit. We now have the “spiritual genetics” of our Father in heaven. A direct connection to the Father, lost in the Fall, had been restored.

Our adoption was not some afterthought. Our Father planned to adopt us in Christ before the world was created and before the Fall. Ephesians 1:3-5 clearly states the Father “chose us in him [Jesus] before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons [and daughters] through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will.” We were conceived in love from all eternity, and we were always to be blessed in Jesus. It has always been the cry of the Father’s heart that we would call him Father (Jer 3:19).

This relationship is not just for when we depart this world. Jesus lovingly reassures us: “I have revealed to them who you are and I will continue to make you even more real to them, so that they may experience the same endless love that you have for me, for your love will now live in them, even as I live in them” (John 17:26, Passion Bible). God came as Jesus to teach, help, and enable us to relate to the Father as he did. Jesus calls God his Father over one hundred times in the gospel of John and over sixty times in the synoptic gospels.

Our Father has always delighted in us as he did in his son Jesus. The Old Testament expresses it well in Zephaniah 3:17. The Father’s real love looks like a joyful mother ever present, soothing her child with love:

He will take great delight in you,
he will quiet you with his love,
he will rejoice over you with singing.

The Scriptures tell us that life with our Father will provide a transformative Father- son/daughter relationship characterized not only by his felt, loving presence, but also by his acceptance, nurturing, guidance, protection, provision, and sense of purpose: a comfortable, liberating relationship of trust, where we can openly share with him our joys, sorrows, and struggles as Jesus did; a relationship that can heal us emotionally, where we will find a powerful sense of our belonging, where our Father will always act in our best interest by adapting his love to each one’s uniqueness and needs.

Jesus’s heartfelt interactions with others, such as the woman at the well, Zacchaeus, the woman caught in adultery, and the blind Bartimaeus, illustrate this well. Our Father’s presence and voice become more familiar as we grow in relationship with him, whether he speaks interiorly or through the Spirit, the Scriptures, life situations, or in many other ways in any number of contexts. The relationship is a deep-seated, heart-based connection rather than an intellectual belief.

On the other hand, life without our Father will leave us orphan-hearted, wandering in deserts rather than living in green pastures beside still waters. Yet, as indicated above, we are not orphans. It is our Father’s desire that we know him as Father and live as his loved children rather than from places of untruth about who we are or who he is, free from oppression or any crippling past hurts. It has always been the Father’s loving desire to “adopt us” and parent us as his beloved children (Eph 1:4-5).

God our Father is, as Barry Adams says, “the Father we have always been looking for.” He is the only Father who can meet our needs. Our hearts are restless until we rest in his love.

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Our Father is constantly inviting us and offering us opportunities to know him better and to grow in this relationship. He is forever seeking us, wanting to take us under his wing. He never forces us. In his free will he has chosen us; we may, in our free will, choose him or reject him.

A large part of the Father’s life is waiting. Should we choose to live in our Father’s love, we are both following and joining his Son, our brother Jesus, who is the light, the truth, and the way to the Father. His Father will become our very real, very accessible “Abba,” just as he was for him.

The opening words of the Lord’s Prayer, “Our Father,” stress this point, as do Jesus’s celebratory words, prior to his ascension, to Mary Magdalene: “my Father and your Father, my God and your God” (John 20:17). We have received the Spirit of sonship, in whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” (Rom 8:15).

To be convinced of this, we need to better understand and trust the Scriptures as well as our own personal experiences of the love of God, as was the case of King David or the Apostle Paul and others in the New Testament. It will mean discarding untruths about God and self. The Scriptures are a love story about a Father who lost his children in the garden and who does everything to bring them back home. Pope Benedict has said that the Bible is a revelation of God’s love. When viewed from this perspective, Jesus’s suffering will also be seen as the Father’s suffering to bring us, his family, home.

Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, a 19th-century French nun and a Doctor of the Church, humbly trusted her own experience of God and taught the spirituality of love, a liberating love. She wrote, “Jesus [who is revealing to us the Father’s character and desires] does not demand great actions from us but simply surrender and gratitude.” The visionary nun Mother Eugenia Ravasio spoke of the Father’s anguish at not being known as he is: “His greatest happiness is being with us and conversing with us like a Father with his children.” Clearly our Father desires our love, too. Niky Gumbel writes, “When you really know God’s love for you, your life is transformed.” Today, many others give testimony to the realness and tenderness of the Father’s love in a relationship that has transformed their lives. For many, the greatest regret is not having known the love of the Father earlier.

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A relationship with the Father will silence the inner voice that says we are not good enough, that we must do more to be somebody or to win approval. Those voices that have led us to abandon ourselves and our sense of self-worth will take leave of our lives. We will not live a life that someone else has aligned for us. We will not live on the end of strings that someone else pulls. We will become more our authentic self, as we are seen, known, and loved by the Father.

It is not that God does not care about sin. He does because it hurts us and distances us from him. His son died because of it. But his heart is always centered on his love, the antithesis of sin, that will put us on the right track, and not on rejection and condemnation (Rom 8:1). Our Father is not mad at us. He does not cast away his family.

Romans 5:5 tells us that God’s love has been poured into our hearts. Love is not an attribute of the Father; it is who he is. It is not fear that sets us free to live the golden rule of love of God, neighbor, and self, but a trusting surrender to his steadfast love that leads us in right ways (Ps 26:3). Should we stray, God will always draw us back with loving kindness (Jer 31.3). The Holy Spirit, who facilitates the loving will of the Father, plays a crucial role in turning our hearts back to the love and grace of the Father. Our Father’s love is a transformative power. “We love because God first loved us” (1 John 4:19).

The Scriptures clearly tell us that our Father’s saving love is and has always been proactive. It is he who draws our hearts towards Jesus (John 6:44) and to himself (Jer 31:3), that we might encounter and grow in his love. We need only come as we are with open hearts. He does not want us to live in exile, but close to him where he can be a Father to us—as indicated by the story of the Prodigal Son in the Gospel of Luke.

In this parable, God the Father unconditionally welcomes the lapsed prodigal son without judgement. The Father has never stopped loving his son, regardless of the boy’s reckless life. He wins back the boy’s heart with a proactive love. He knows his son’s hunger is much deeper than earthly food. With the ring of adoption placed on his finger, the forgiven, repentant son begins to grow in relationship with the merciful Father. He is loved, freed from guilt and alienating shame. It is the same for you and me: if we accept our Father’s gratuitous love, the other pieces will fall into place.

Our response of love to love also supersedes mere obedience. The obedient, older brother in the parable fails to realize this. He remains “outside” the relationship, behaving as a servant rather than a son. What an empty life it would be if we only served each other from cold obedience rather than from a love that wants to see each other’s lives enhanced with increasing joy!

We need not fear our imperfections, but like the Prodigal Son or the Apostle Paul, surrender to God’s love. Following Jesus, led by the Spirit, Paul “forgot” about his “thorn in the flesh” and left the “remodeling” of himself to God. Paul knew the turbulence of sin in his life yet rejoiced in God, “who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Rom 7:25). Life was not a burden but a joy for Paul.

Our Father does not discipline us with fear but raises us as loved sons and daughters (Rom 8:15-16). His love, in fact, casts out fear (1 John 4:18) and begets in us a love for all (1 John 4:19). Should we sin, our Father is in the business of restoration. As Paul said: “I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love.” (Rom 8:38-39, NLT). And as the church teaches, the “sheer, gratuitous love” of the Father is the basis of our faith (Catechism of the Catholic Church, #218). The Mass, the center of Catholic worship, is a prayer to the Father.

May we accept Jesus’s invitation to “come and see” and “taste” that the Father’s love is good, to trustingly join Jesus and the Holy Spirit in the eternal dance of love with the Father. Let it not scandalize us to call God our paternal and relational Father. May we, like David, cry out, “Thou art my Father” (Psalm 89:27) and enjoy our Father’s company. ♦

Maree Sobolewski is a committed Catholic from Australia. She holds a master of arts in theology and spirituality and is a team member of Catholic Church Reform International. She has worked as an educator, a retreat leader and seminar facilitator, and a school chaplain, and has served as a missionary in Tasmania and the Northwest Territories of Canada. Maree has been actively involved in her parish for most of her adult life. She has served as a board member, prayer group leader, and international event coordinator, among other roles.

Image: John Everett Millais, The Prodigal Son, 1864