"Father and Son"

"Who is the Christ? First, most obviously he was a man. He was a man who walked the journey of faith, who grew, as Luke says, in wisdom and grace. It was he who returned to the desert to seek the will of his Father, to seek to hear what the Father was telling him, to seek to be true to himself and the word of the Father. Why did Jesus call God Father? My own opinion as to why he chose the masculine word (although he often uses feminine images) is that it is the harder and more necessary word to speak. Perhaps many more people have been wounded by the masculine. In Luke's Gospel every time Jesus prays (five times explicitly), his words are always preceded by "Abba," "Daddy." This brings out the beautiful relationship in which Jesus grows with his Father, of being the loving, trusting son. Three times at the end of the Gospel, in Gethsemane, and two times on the cross he calls out "Daddy!" Jesus seeks at all cost to be true to his Father, true to this relationship. Whenever he goes to the desert he returns to the city to preach the word with new power. What is this word? That the Father has absolute claim to our fidelity, our love and our life, that God's love is unconditional and forever."
- Richard Rohr, from The Great Themes of Scripture