the HOLY Father

[Guest eawilli]

ALL GLORY TO GOD!

HEY to all!!

I was confronted with a question about our Catholic faith. My piano teacher and I tend to spend more time on faith than piano and today she brought up our amazing Pope and his title, our Holy Father. She said that she could never call anyone but Jesus Christ "holy."
The way I see it, Jesus was and is the Holy of Holy, but humans can still be holy, in fact--- its our mission and our calling.
Is there anything else that might help me in my explanation?

Love in Christ, with Mary,
Morgan Elizabeth Ann

[Carson Weber]

[quote name='eawilli' date='Oct 4 2004, 10:21 PM'] I was confronted with a question about our Catholic faith. My piano teacher and I tend to spend more time on faith than piano and today she brought up our amazing Pope and his title, our Holy Father. She said that she could never call anyone but Jesus Christ "holy." [/quote]
Holy, in the context of "Holy Father," means "to be set apart" or "consecrated for a specific purpose." Peter and his successors are set apart and consecrated for the special purpose of serving as the Church's visible head.

Saint Paul calls other Christians "saints" in the New Testament, and this word means "holy people." If St. Paul can refer to Christians as holy as a whole, then why can't we call one person holy as well?

[Apotheoun]

God is holy because He is holiness itself, and the cause of all holiness in man. So, when a man calls the Pope "the Holy Father," he is not referring to him in the sense that he, i.e., Pope John Paul II, is innately holy, but that the Pope has been made holy in his office as successor of St. Peter by Christ the Lord Himself. The Pope's pontifical office has been sanctified by God, and thus the man who occupies it, to the degree that he does not impede God's grace, is called holy.

As St. Augustine said in reference to the holiness of individual men and the Church as a whole:

[quote name='Enarrationes in Psalmos' date=' psalm 86, no. 4']"Preserve Thou My Soul, for I am holy" (verse 2). I know not whether any one could say this, "I am holy," but He who was in the world without sin: He by whom all sins were not committed but [i]remitted[/i]. We own it to be His voice saying, "Preserve Thou My Soul, for I am holy;" of course in that form of a servant which He had assumed. For in that was flesh, in that, was also a Soul. For He was not, as some have said, only Flesh and the Word: but Flesh and Soul also, and the Word, and all this, One Son of God, One Christ, One Saviour; in the forth of God equal to the Father, in the form of a servant the Head of the Church. When therefore I hear, "for I am holy," I recognise His voice: yet do I exclude my own? Surely He speaks inseparably from His body when He speaks thus. [i]Shall I then dare to say, "For I am holy"? If holy as making holy, and as needing none to sanctify, I should be proud and false: [b]but if holy as made holy, as it is written, "Be ye holy, for I am holy," then the body of Christ may venture, and that one Man "crying from the end of the earth," may venture with his Head, and under his Head, to say, "For I am holy." For he hath received the grace of holiness, the grace of Baptism, and of remission of sins . . . . Say unto thy God, I am holy, for Thou hast sanctified me: because I received, not because I had: because Thou gavest, not because I deserved[/b][/i]. For on another side thou art beginning to do an injury to our Lord Jesus Christ Himself. For if all Christians who are faithful and have been baptized in Him have put Him on, as the Apostle saith, "As many as are baptized in Christ have put on Christ:" if they have been made members of His body, and say that they are not holy, they do injury to their Head, of whom they are members, and yet not holy. Look thou where thou art and from thy Head assume dignity.[/quote]

So, when a Catholic speaks of the Pope, or of any man as holy, he speaks of him as holy because he has been sanctified by God, who is the source of all holiness. The mystery of the incarnation of God shows that He intends for all mankind to participate in His uncreated holiness.