Abba!

“’Abba, Father,’ he said, ‘everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me’” Mark 14:36.

There is nothing that used to tear me apart more than hearing one of my children crying out to me, ‘Mommy…don’t go!’ Their desperate cry due to our separation would resonate over and over in my head while I was gone. I knew we wouldn’t be separated for long but they didn’t. They could only comprehend from the standpoint of their knowledge and experience up to that stage in their life.

"In Aramaic, ‘abba is originally…a word derived from baby-language. When a child is weaned, it learns to say abba (daddy)…abba acquired the warm, familiar ring which we may feel in such an expression as ‘dear father.’ Nowhere in the entire wealth of devotional literature produced by ancient Judaism do we find ‘abba’ being used as a way of addressing God. The pious Jew knew too much of the great gap between God and man to be free to address God with the familiar word used in everyday family life." The Dictionary of New Testament Theology. But Jesus was different…He was the only child of God…His Daddy…never separated before as they shared One spirit…the Holy Spirit.

I cannot imagine the grief God felt when the cries of His only Son rose up to heaven pleading three times for the cup of separation to be removed if Father willed it to happen. Jesus was not asking to be spared from the cross for He knew that this was the purpose for which He was born. His cry was the despair knowing that the sinless One would have to take on the sins of mankind, thereby separating Himself from His Holy Father. He cried out with that child like longing for His parent but heaven was silent…the answer was obvious… Christ would have to take on mankind’s sins of past, present and future.

The Father knew they would be reunited in glory and honor and the Family would benefit from the temporary separation. Father God still had to hear the cries of His only Son knowing He had the power to stop His pain.

If you ever doubt the love of the Holy Father you will not have to look any further than the cross. He sacrificed His only Son for the benefit of His adopted sons. Allow that to really sink in on an earthly level. We should never doubt the love of the Trinity – our lives have been bought, saved and led by this Holy Community.

What love can be greater than this?