“Father” some sixty times in the Gospels. Calling God “Father” was the heart of the prayer life of Jesus Christ as it was for no one before him. Jesus was also the first to employ the precise word that he used when he addressed his Father. It was the word Jewish children used for their fathers: abba. In fact, abba was almost certainly the word that Jesus himself used for his father Joseph when he was working in his carpentry shop back in Nazareth. The word abba was picked up by the apostles