Jesus tells us that we must not call anyone Father on this earth except God. Can you kindly explain why we call all priests Father?

Good morning, Father,

I hope you are well.

In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus tells us that we must not call anyone Father on this earth except God. Can you kindly explain why we call all priests Father?

Thank you very much for your explanations, I appreciate them so much.

Have a good day,

Marianna from Edinburgh

Response of the priest

Dear Marianna,

1. To understand this statement of the Lord, it is necessary to remember that the Pharisees liked to be called “father.”

Now, Saint Thomas Aquinas notes that the name “father” is the highest and most noble title one can give a person, because a father generates life.

2. The Pharisees did not communicate any life. On the contrary, they had distorted religion, reducing it to pure outward appearance, to external and material obedience to God’s precepts.

So much so that, in response to God’s command that His law be kept always in one’s mind, they obeyed by placing small written pieces of the Law inside boxes called phylacteries and tying them to their foreheads.

3. Likewise, regarding God’s command to rest on the Sabbath, they determined exactly how many steps one could take outside the home, excluding those taken to go to the synagogue.

They clearly forgot that the Sabbath exists so that man may rest in God and so that God may rest in the heart of man.

4. Since true fatherhood belongs to God—because He generates life—true fatherhood also belongs to those who communicate life, whether biologically or spiritually.

For this reason, Jesus Christ did not abolish the fourth commandment of the Decalogue, which commands us to honour our father and mother and to call our parents “father” and “mother.”

5. Likewise, life is generated in the spiritual order. This is why Saint Paul says to the Corinthians:

“For though you might have ten thousand guardians in Christ, you do not have many fathers. Indeed, in Christ Jesus I became your father through the Gospel” (1 Cor 4:15).

Similarly, Saint Paul writes to Philemon: “ I am appealing to you for my child, Onesimus, whose father I have become during my imprisonment” (Phlm 1:10). He had generated him in the faith.

Moreover, Abraham is also called “father in faith” in Sacred Scripture: “ the faith of Abraham, for he is the father of all of us” (Rom 4:16).

6. Keeping in mind that God created us in His image and likeness, and that He is essentially Father, becoming more like God means becoming more like Him in fatherhood—not only biological fatherhood, but above all spiritual fatherhood.

This is why Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus, referring to a certain Prandini who had been condemned to death and seemed destined to die unrepentant, had a Mass celebrated for him, accompanied by many sacrifices and prayers.

She herself writes in Story of a Soul:

“I had obtained the ‘sign’ I had asked for, and that sign was the faithful reproduction of the graces Jesus had given me to draw me to pray for sinners. (…). I wanted to give them to drink of that Immaculate Blood which would cleanse their stains, and the lips of ‘my first child’ went to rest upon the sacred wounds!!! What a sweet answer!” (no. 136).

7. Finally, we must not forget that Christ indicated the Virgin Mary as Mother. Entrusting her to the apostle John, He said: “Here is your mother.” (Jn 19:27).

He called her Mother.

He did not contradict what He had previously said: “Call no one on earth your father.”

With the hope that your spiritual motherhood may grow ever wider, I bless you and remember you in prayer.

Father Angelo

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