This book’s author, Fr. Mark Mary Ames, is a member of the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal, the order started by Fr. Benedict Groeschel, a favorite author of mine. The order lives and is based in the slums of the Bronx, New York. (I liked how Fr. Groeschel once said: “I hope I die and go to Purgatory; it will be a step up from the Bronx.)
The Father is a book made up of 30 short meditations which relate events in the lives of the friars, the people they serve, and/or to fathers of families. The meditations are meant “to draw you into the heart of God,” The Father. And that, they most surely do. The events described show human examples of love. God The Father, however, IS LOVE, itself, and any human actions are only pale imitations, but the examples Fr. Ames relates will touch your heart, and yes, thereby draw you into the heart of God.
Humans can, and should WILL TO love, with the “agape” type of love that Jesus commands of us, a love that is a total giving of self, of forgetting self. With this type of love, yes, you can will to love the most irritating or disgusting of people. Relative to the people who did not understand Him, Jesus once said, “but I loved them anyway.” But the love of God the Father (which the human Jesus had) is more than just a willed love; it is a love which comes from His Heart, His very BEING. And that is the love we were created, in the image and likeness of God, to grow into, to grow to be more like Him our entire lives.
Looking back over the pages of this great book, I am surprised at the few underlines I made of the text. I guess that makes sense though; it is not a sentence or simple thought which struck me as I read, but the heart of Love that was in the totality of the words.
I did underline, however, these two important sentences. Each is part of a chapter’s closing prayer, which in some ways summarized my heart after reading that chapter. The first prayer I underlined ends with:
May I pour myself out in love of You and love of my brothers and sisters with great generosity. I ask this in Jesus' name.
And then there’s this second underlined prayer quote. It is the last sentence of the last page of the book, which I happened to read before mass this morning, as I sat in line for confession:
May the depths you were willing to go in pursuit of me move my heart to gratitude, but also to contrition and repentance for times I have doubted or rejected your love for me. Help me to receive the gift of your pursuit of me. I ask this in Jesus' name.
Amen.
