Day 142: Dance with my father again…

"I hate my father." That’s a big word and definitely very impolite to say. It is even comparable to a curse because it is coming from me, a son of my father. But how can I wish to dance with my father whom I remember from my childhood memory as being very strict, manipulative and uncaring? He deserves every bit of harshness there is in that word since it was from him that I have learned it first. How certain I am that I will be better off without him. Or am I?

But I realized that this is the trick of the devil – to present me only the one side of the coin or convince me that there is in fact only one side of the coin. To judge my father as what my adversary is trying to persuade me is to admit that in truth I do not really know my father, thus in all angles I am culpable of disrespect and arrogance for saying that ‘I hate my father.’

But the word of God is on my rescue, ‘a lamp to my feet and a light for my path’ (Ps 119.105). With God’s word everything takes a new meaning because truth and goodness are revealed and made manifest. I am like the prodigal son in the Gospel of Luke who because of unknowing and arrogance considered his father ‘dead’ by asking his part of the inheritance (Lk 15.12). Even when he came into his senses and decided to come back to his father’s house that he showed how one-sided his knowledge of his father is (Lk 15.19).

I could imagine the impact in his mind and heart realizing that his father did not even let him finish his repentance speech but immediately embraced him, ordered that he be clothed and to prepare a great feast for him. He remains a son to his father even in his thought he no longer deserved to be one. It is through the humility, by the mercy and compassion of the father that the son’s ‘coming into his senses’ took its real and full meaning – that he knows now his father would not trade him for the world (for whatever prevailing and conventional opinion there is on the matter). Now, he knows him well as loving, merciful and compassionate father.

In the same way, what I remember of my father as uncaring, controlling and unbending only shows my opinionated ignorant mind which for so several years has locked me up. Now I want to liberate myself from the bondage of being a prodigal son, who considers my father as worthless, and instead celebrate with him as he celebrates for having me; to free myself from the trick of the devil that love is not possible to turn the tables; to finally come into my senses in the real sense of the word that my father shares the love, mercy and compassion of ‘Our Father’ in heaven.

This truth I know and believe from the Incarnated Word of God who says, “I have said this to you in figures; the hour is coming when I shall no longer speak to you in figures but tell you plainly of the Father.” (Jn 16.25)