Servant of God, Father Isaac Thomas Hecker CSP is the founder of the Paulist Fathers. The second series of Hecker Reflections are primarily drawn from his sermon collection. The following reflection is taken from a sermon titled, “Fidelity to Conscience,” that Father Hecker preached at the Paulist Mother Church in New York City, the Parish of Saint Paul the Apostle in 1863. This sermon was published in a Paulist sermon collection in 1864.

‘We are Children of God’

Christians are called to serve God in a spirit of liberty and love. In the old Law, it was not so. God, in giving the Law to the Jewish people, said through Moses: ‘Behold I set before you this day a blessing and a curse: a blessing if you obey and a curse if you do not obey that which I command you.’ God was held up to the Jewish people as a “terrible God” and the keeping of the Law rested mainly on the motives of hope for temporal rewards, and the fear of temporal punishments. The observance of the Law, with its rules and ceremonies, was felt to be a difficult task.

The new covenant, on the other hand, breathes a spirit of love and liberty. God is pictured in Jesus parables as the good shepherd – the kind, indulgent and tender father. His sermon on the mount is filled with blessings and exhortations to childlike confidence in God as our Heavenly Father.

No one can fail to see there is a great difference between the Law and the Gospel. The predominant spirit of the one is a spirit of bondage and fear; the predominant spirit of the other is that of love and liberty. The Law was mercenary and servile; the Gospel establishes between God and the soul a new and more perfect parental and filial relationship. St. John gives us the very essence of the Gospel in one phrase, “God is love.”

A Response from Father Paul Robichaud, CSP

How do we respond to God’s presence? Do we fear God and worry that God will punish us? Or do we see God as a loving parent; someone we can always go to when we are in need? Here in the opening of a sermon, delivered at the 59^th Street Church in New York, Servant of God, Isaac Thomas Hecker compares these two very different understandings of God.

The God of the Old Testament is the Father of Israel, but here fatherhood means authority and protection. God is Lord over his people and has established a covenant by which Israel is to remain faithful. Beginning with the Torah, the covenant has been interpreted through the Law. In the Old Testament, to remain faithful to God is to keep the Law. And by the time of Jesus, so much law has been added through the interpretation of the scribes and Pharisees, that it is difficult to be faithful.

Jesus teaches the Fatherhood of God in a very different sense; for God has come to us not in law but in love. Jesus is the true Son of God and he extends his sonship to us in his death and rising. Jesus invites us to become the adopted children of the Father. God is no longer distant for the kingdom of God is here and at hand. As Christians we are now a part of God’s family. The good news that we share today.

About this series

Paulist Father Paul Robichaud, CSP is Historian of the Paulist Fathers and Postulator of the Cause of Father Hecker. Publishing and disseminating the writing of Servant of God Isaac Hecker is the work of the Office for Hecker’s Cause. If you have asked Father Hecker to pray for you or another person who is ill and you believe something miraculous has happened, please phone Father Paul at 202-269-2538.