Loving the Father

Debemus hunc omnes et amare, quod pater est; et revereri, quod dominus; et honorificare, quod beneficus; et metuere, quod severus: utraque persona in eo venerabilis. Quis salva pietate non diligat animae suae parentem? Aut quis impune contemnat eum, qui rerum dominatur, habeat in omnes veram et aeternam potestatem? Si patrem consideres, ortum nobis ad lucem, qua fruimur, subministrat: per illum vivimus, per illum in hospitium hujus mundi intravimus. Si Deum cogites, ille nos innumerabilibus copiis alit, ille sustentat, in hujus domo habitamus, hujus familia sumus; et si minus obsequens, quam decebat, minusque officiosa, quam domini et parentis immortalia merita poscebant: tamen plurimum proficit ad veniam consequendam, si cultum ejus notionemque teneamus; si objectis humilibus terrenisque tam rebus, quam bonis, coelestia et divina sempiterna meditemur. Quod ut facere possimus, Deus nobis sequendus est, Deus adorandus et diligendus est; quoniam in eo est materia rerum, et ratio virtutum, et fons bonorum. Lactantius, De Ira Dei Cap XXIII

We should all love Him because He is our Father and reverence Him because He is our Lord, honouring Him because He is kind and fearing Him because He is severe, each character in Him being worthy of respect. Who can preserve piety and yet not love the parent of his soul? Or who can with impunity despise Him who, as ruler of all things, has true and eternal power over all? If you would consider Him as Father, then it is He who supplies to us our entrance to the light which we enjoy, it is through Him we live, it is through Him we have entered into the lodgings of this world. If you would contemplate Him as God, it is He who nourishes us with innumerable resources, it is He who sustains us, while we dwell in His house, we who are His household. And if we are less obedient than was befitting, and less attentive to our duty than the endless merits of our Master and Parent required, nevertheless it profits us greatly for the receiving of pardon if we hold to the worship and knowledge of Him, if, laying aside low and worldly affairs and goods, we meditate upon eternal heavenly and Divine things. And that we may be able to do this, God must be sought by us, God must be adored and loved, since there is in Him the substance of things, the sum of the virtues, and the fount of all that is good. Lactantius, On The Anger of God, Chapter 23