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.

Sonship of Christ

Strictly speaking, Christ alone is the Son of God. No one has the innate right to call God his Father, for to do so is to claim the same nature with God; and therefore to be equal with God; and to be God. If some outside of the Gospel have called God by this name, it is but a figure of speech or perhaps a word handed down; an unconscious claim of the great privilege imparted to us in Christ. For the Gospel tells us that Christ has shared His Sonship. Christ has become man. One by one, by a new special birth, by a regeneration directed by His Spirit, He makes us His brothers and sisters and we become “the adopted children of God.”

As Paul teaches in his letter to the Romans (8:15-17), “You have received the Spirit of adoption by which we cry ‘Abba, Father.’ For the Spirit testifies with our spirits that we are the Gods children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ.” Therefore we participate in the divine Sonship of Christ. It is the Spirit of Christ in us, which speaks through us and names his Father as our Father. As Paul teaches in Galatians (4:4-6), “In the fullness of time God has sent His Son, that we might receive the adoption of sons, and because we are His children, God has sent the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying ‘Abba, Father.’”

God is the Father of Christ and Christ in becoming man has made us his brothers and sisters. We are the true children of God through Christ; this is the transcendent privilege of Christians. By the Incarnation, Christ has opened to us the treasures of grace and we are in God’s house as his children. All things are ours for we are Christ’s and Christ is God’s

A Response from Father Paul Robichaud, CSP

We are the adopted children of God. Who me? I am a small fish in this pond! I am not important or influential! What I do does not matter. In today’s reflection, Servant of God Isaac Hecker challenges Christians who have this kind of poor self-image.

We have this great gift within our very being. We can call upon God as his children. The problem is that many Christians neither understand nor use this gift. When Jacob wrestled with an angel in Genesis, Jacob asked for God’s name and was met with silence. Moses asked God again at Mount Sinai, and God said, “I am.” This name became so sacred that it was whispered by the high priest in the holy of holies of the Temple as the people of Israel cried out in song to cover the sound. In Paul’s letter to the Romans and again in Galatians, the Apostle teaches that the spirit of sonship we have received cries out to God, “Abba, Father.” We have God’s ear and he hears us as his children when we call upon him.

As Father Hecker says, “We are the true children of God through Christ.” As a Christian we have literally been reborn in baptism. We are the brothers and sisters of Christ, the adopted children of God our Father. In the Incarnation, the birth of Jesus, God and humankind have become one. Through the death and rising of Jesus, God bestows His Spirit upon us. This gives us both an extraordinary identity and an extraordinary empowerment. But like all good gifts, they only work if you use them. Be a child of God today and let God’s love pass through you to others.

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.