Our Father

I once knew a woman who, to my horror, used to pray ‘My Father’. Her argument was that she could not account for anyone else but that she knew that God was her Father. Apart from the pride of such disobedience to the words given by Christ, she was doing herself dreadful harm by isolating herself from the Communion of the one Church, cutting herself off from the Saints, and leaving herself to flounder alone in the wide, wide sea of temptation. With that one word, *our*, we enter into the freedom of the whole Christian world, on earth and in heaven. We are not abandoned to icy isolation but enter into the joy o the Saints, past, present, future; we enter into a world no longer finite, bound by time and space. We are permitted by Christ himself to join in – no exclusion: our. And Father? No, not the graybeard of childish nightmares but the first Person of the Trinity. Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Three Persons, one Godhead. We pray ourselves immediately into the Mystery, and out of the greybeard, somewhere in the clouds, who punishes us for every little fault, who demands our obedience, who avenges every misdeed. Our Father: He is the first Person of the Trinity, who in his tender love for mankind shows Himself to us in the Second Person, Christ God. We cannot see the Father, but we can see the Son, God incarnate. ‘I and my Father are one’ (John 10:30).

Our Father: with these words we are into the very innermost heart of the Mystery of the Trinity.

(Tavener, John, and Mother Thekla, Icons: Mediations in Words and Music, Fount Paperbacks, London, 1994, p. 44.)

An Urgent Request for Prayer

From Owen, the Ochlophobist

Owen writes:

Our closest friends Matthew and Esther have been mentioned on this blog many times. They farm in southern Missouri.

Yesterday their youngest child, Fergus, suffered an accident in which he nearly drowned at their home. He did not breathe for a considerable time. He was brought by helicopter to a hospital. He is on a breathing machine, and is being kept cold in order to reduce brain swelling. The doctors told his parents that they will not know the extent of brain health until 48 to 72 hours after the accident. It has been less than 24 hours as of this writing, and at this point Fergus is not doing well. Fergus' first birthday is later this month.

The pain of this event is compounded by the fact that Matt & Esther lost a 2 month old daughter to SIDS in 2006.

If you could remember them in your prayers, dear reader, I should be most grateful.

Holy Father St. Patrick, healer and wonder-worker, pray to Christ our God for His servant, the infant Fergus!

UPDATE: (March 23) Fergus is not doing well. He is unresponsive, we are told. Things look bleak.

Fountain of Life

Angelina Bombolina (the orphaned mouse) crawls onto my hand eagerly as soon as I put it near her. Then she goes crazy, wriggling in my fingers, desperately looking for the miniature rubber nipple she has learned is somewhere nearby. I have to make her lie upon my third finger and grasp her head firmly with thumb and first two fingers, to hold her still long enough to make the connection. I squeeze one droplet of formula onto her mouth and then she calms down, opens up, and begins drinking.

The three infant squirrels start making sucking movements as soon as I pick them up. Blind and helpless, they, too, nose about greedily for their meal and require to be controlled and stilled before they can find it.

Somewhere in there, there's got to be an allegory of the Christian life.