Quote from JPII: God is Father and Mother

God is Father and Mother: A Reflection for the Family
(from the book previously cited, June 5 reflection)

I would like to draw your attention to a basic aspect of conjugal love: its intrinsic openness to life. The Catechism of the Catholic Church stresses this when it points out that the spouses’ love “naturally tends to be fruitful. A child does not come from outside as something added on to the mutual love of the spouses, but springs from the very heart of that mutual giving, as its fruit and fulfillment.” Grasping the mysterious greatness of this event is of fundamental importance. As I wrote in the Letter to Families, “God himself is present in human fatherhood and motherhood… Indeed, God alone is the source of that ‘image and likeness’ which is proper to the human being, as it was received at creation. Begetting is the continuation of the creation.”
Discourse at Castel Gandolfo, July 17, 1994
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My comments:

While the point that Pope John Paul II was making in this passage is to justify why openness to life (conception) is key to conjugal love, he has an equally important insight that I would like to emphasize. When people try to characterize God as being “male” or “female,” they are wrong and worse, attempting to shrink God down to a human component, rather than understand that the whole templates and conceptualization of male and female are contained within the infinite expanse of God. John Paul explains this in a way that is very easy to understand here, when he says that God is the source of Male and Female (fatherhood and motherhood) in their image (how they appear) and likeness (what they are like, their qualities, in other words). Pope Benedict has also answered questions on this topic and has too explained that God cannot be thought of as either "male" or "female" in the sense of gender assignment.

God is infinitely much more than being “male” or “female.” He is the source of both of their patterns, their archetypes, and their reality. This is why those who suffer and who lack one or both parents can turn in confidence to God for paternal or maternal comfort and understanding. God encompasses both realities and so much more. Jesus refers to God as God the Father because Jesus had a mother, the human born Mary, and the father of Jesus was the Holy Spirit sent by God to overshadow Mary. Therefore Christians are correct to emulate Jesus Christ and think of God as God the Father, but this in no way limits the all encompassing reality of God in total. This is one of the many reasons why fallen away, heretical, or, to be charitable, "confused" Christians who try to make God to be female or a mother goddess are totally wrong and are fallen away from the faith of Christianity. A Christian follows Christ's example and as Mary his mother exhorts them, "Do whatever he tells you."