Jesus has revealed ourselves to us by revealing the Father to us.  It is by revealing the Father to us that Jesus has enabled us to know ourselves in our identity as men and women.  It is in knowing the Father precisely as Father that we find our own individual identity.  Very many of our troubles, anxieties, perplexities, and frustrations come from not really knowing or appreciating or feeling what we really are individually.  Our true identity is that of children of God, and only by absorbing this truth into the marrow of our bones do we become ourselves and feel whole, secure, normal, and at peace.  Our basic identity is that of sons and daughters of God. . .

It is of supreme importance for us to have the right attitude toward God and to cultivate the right feelings in the presence of our Creator.  In our own poor human analysis of what God is like we attribute various qualities or attributes to Him, and these help us to form an idea or picture of God, which at least points in the right direction.  But the occasion on which above all we need the right attitude toward God . . . is in our prayers.  We often begin our official prayers with words like “Almighty and Eternal God,” and it is good for us to be reminded of God’s power and might and timelessness, but when simple people asked Jesus . . . to teach them how to pray, He did so by expressing His own prayer; and He was absolutely fully conscious of the fact that He was the Son of the Father.  When Jesus made a human prayer to God, He could only call upon Him as Father.  He felt so deeply the fact that He was Son and God His Father that He could hardly call God anything else.  So when asked to teach His apostles how to pray He did so, and taught all of us too:  “When you pray, say, ‘Our Father.’”  This name for God . . . is the basic one, and it is within the context of the name and reality of Father that all the other things we say about God must be contained.

A small child lives constantly in the company of its father and mother, and its whole world outlook is based on them.  It relates everything to them and desires to bring them into everything.  It is not just showing off that prompts a child to drive its parents nearly mad by asking them to watch everything it does; the child is conscious of being incomplete himself and finds fullness, completion in its parents’ company.  Something is missing if they are not there . . .

I doubt if Jesus could have taught us to call God our Father if He had not also told us to love one another as brothers and sisters.  This is not just because of a law God has laid down so that only by obedience can we be sons and daughters of God.  It is the nature of things for us as humans that relationship with the Father involves relationship with His other children.  The fact that the man next to me is my brother is not just something I must accept as a teaching from Christ intended to make me treat my neighbor well.  I cannot feel that God is my Father in the depths of my heart and soul unless I also feel that His other children are my brothers and sisters. . . You cannot love God unless you know Him as Father, and you cannot love Him as Father unless you feel you are His child, and you cannot feel you are His child if you do not feel you belong to His united family.  The Fatherhood of God makes us one. . .

Although it is not very easy to love everyone, we are not asked to feel an attraction to everyone or even to suppress successfully every feeling of antagonism or dislike.  Feelings are caused by many influences and not necessarily by our hearts.  You can love others and do good to them even if you feel a strong repugnance toward them if you realize that they are your brothers and sisters and that Jesus, the Son of God, is in them. . .

Our true identity is found . . . in the Blessed Trinity, living as children of the Father in the Only Begotten Son through the power of the Holy Spirit. . . Contemplation begins when we are aware in our very bones that God who is love is our Father, and we are His children in Christ, and everyone is our brother or sister. . .  Eternal life is a relationship . . . in which we truly shall find ourselves and know ourselves in an ecstatic joy of union with God and one another.