Looking for a perfect father?

Jesus, in today’s Gospel, Mt. 6: 7-15, tells us “Your Father knows what you need before you ask him.”  We are talking about a Father who is perfect, full of compassion, who understands what is good for us, what would be detrimental for us and who knows how to say “no” when saying so is what we need to hear.  e is the kind of Father who is present to us all of the tim,e who cares for us in the “good” and “bad"He is the kind of Father who is present to us all of the time, who cares for us in the “good” and “bad” times of our lives, who always treats us with respect, who does not withhold the truth from us or treat us immaturely but in ways that build our self-esteem, challenges and empowers us to greatness. God, as father, leads us to choose what is right and just and life-giving and teaches us to reject all that would harm us spiritually, psychologically and physically. 

This is the kind of father we highly respect, are eager to “visit”, to consult, to obey. We naturally pray as Jesus did: “Hallowed be thy name…Thy will be done” in us as it is in You. God desires our best, a best described by St. Paul’s prayer for us in Ephesians 3: 15-21: 

“This, then, is what I pray, kneeling before the Father, from whom every fatherhood, in heaven or on earth, takes its name.  In the abundance of his glory may he, through his Spirit, enable you to grow firm in power with regard to your inner self, so that Christ may live in your hearts through faith, and then, planted in love and built on love, with all God’s holy people you will have the strength to grasp the breadth and the length, the height and the depth; so that, knowing the love of Christ, which is beyond knowledge, you may be filled with the utter fullness of God.

“Glory be to him whose power, working in us, can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine; glory be to him from generation to generation in the Church and in Christ Jesus for ever and ever. Amen.”