Heart of a Father

Rocco has posted Archbishop Charles Chaput's homily for the ordination of an auxiliary. Quite good, as is expected.

Snippet:

The love of mothers and fathers is both instinctive and deliberate. It's instinctive in the sense that sometimes it makes no sense at all. It's irrational. There's no "gain" in loving a child who, by the measure of the world, is a failure or defective. The love of a parent is also deliberate in the sense that a mother and father will use all of their skill and all of their intelligence, and sacrifice nearly everything they have, to try secure the safety and happiness of that same wounded child.This is how we need to read Deuteronomy today. This is what Scripture means when it says that the "Lord has set his heart on you and chose you," even though Israel is the smallest of all nations and completely unworthy of God's attention. There is no "rational" basis for God's choice of Israel -- or his choice of us. The only motive for God's love is His own interior identity, the tenderness of a father's heart; a father who treasures his children simply because he does. As St. John says in today's epistle, "God is love," and the nature of love is to give itself away radically. When Christians say that "God is love," we don't merely mean that God loves His people "a whole lot," but rather that God Himself is the essence of love, a relationship of love, from all eternity.