TOTD, May 26

Our Father in Heaven

The Fritzl case emerged in late April 2008 when a 42-year-old Austrian woman, Elisabeth Fritzl, stated to police that she had been sexually abused, raped, and physically assaulted by her father, Josef Fritzl, since 1977 and had been imprisoned by him for 24 years, since 1984. Her father had held her captive in a small, soundproofed and windowless cellar in the underground basement of the family home in the town of Amstetten in Lower Austria. During her captivity, she had given birth to a total of seven children, all of whom had been fathered by Josef. Three of them had been imprisoned along with their mother for the whole of their lives: daughter Kerstin, aged 19; and sons Stefan, 18; and Felix, 5. Of the other children, three had been raised by Fritzl and his wife Rosemarie in the upstairs home. Fritzl engineered the appearance of these children as foundlings discovered outside their house, giving the impression that their mother, Elisabeth, had abandoned them: Lisa at nine months in 1993, Monika at ten months in 1994, and Alexander at fifteen months in 1997. Alexander's twin died three days after birth. (Source: Wikipedia).

Maybe we’re all familiar with this case. We got surprised and speechless. How could a father do that kind of thing? Where’s his heart? I’m not here to judge, but I just want to show that it’s really hard with that kind of condition to understand the fatherhood that we have in our Lord in heaven.

We have our biological father, even how perfect he is, he’s still human. And in some cases, like the one that I read in Scott Hahn’s book, Understanding Our Father, it’s really hard to understand the fatherhood if let say we grow up in a single parent family. The father figure that we have in mind as how our biological father has shown us is really different with our father in Heaven.

Along this journey of life, we might feel the emptiness, the hunger of love. And that’s when we need to turn to God. Because only from our Father in heaven, we can get the kind of love that would last forever inside of our heart. (-fon-)

"This, then, is how you should pray:
" 'Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done
on earth as it is in heaven.
--- Matthew 6:9-10