July 21, 2025 // Perspective

The Gifts of God’s Fatherhood

Father Mark Hellinger

On the 17th Sunday in Ordinary time, there are two major themes that pop out from the liturgical texts and are summarized very succinctly by the Alleluia verse: “You have received a Spirit of adoption, through which we cry, ‘Abba, Father.’” Adoption and fatherhood are two key reflections in the life of any Christian, and they are particularly placed before us on this Sunday.

In fact, the first reading points us exactly to why both themes matter so much. In Abraham’s negotiation with God on behalf of Sodom, we actually see a reflection of the whole drama of human salvation: the search for the one righteous person. The Lord’s commitment that if he would be able to find 10 righteous persons he would spare the city is reflective of our own condition. Ultimately, God cannot find 10 righteous persons, and so He destroys the city. Turning to the more global, the story of salvation history is the search for even one righteous person who God cannot find after the Fall.

Yet, in His mercy, not finding a righteous person does not cause the destruction of our cosmos (which Justice demands). Rather, God sends His Son into the world, and thus He finds a righteous one: Himself, humbled to share our humanity so that He may raise us to divinity.

Thus, we see the lens through
which we can appreciate both the second reading and the Gospel. Instead of condemning the world because not a single righteous person could be found, the Father sent His Son – a greater gift than we could have asked for or imagined – into the world as the righteous one through which we can be made righteous.

This is why baptism matters so much, because through it we are made one with the Son of God, grafted on to His body, so that we can be united to the righteousness of God and so be saved. Thus, Paul writes, “You were buried with Him in baptism, in which you were also raised with Him.” In this light, we can make sense, as a bit of an aside, of both the necessity of baptism for salvation and the ancient practice of infant baptism. There is no salvific righteousness apart from the single righteous one: Jesus Christ, God-made-man.

Because we are grafted on to the body of Christ (which is the Church), we can speak of an “adoption.” We are not born children of God in the salvific sense (though being creatures there is a loose sense in which we can speak of that). Rather, the claim of adoption Paul makes, and that is reiterated by the Alleluia verse, reminds us of the necessity of union with Jesus. But it also reminds us of the overwhelming power of the Father’s love.

Adoption always requires the specific choice of one who takes on the child. Rather than being a merely natural obligation, the one who is adopted is specifically chosen and “taken on.” Thus,
language of being adopted sons and daughters of God reminds us both of our inability to merit anything on our own as well as the humility of God in lowering Himself to draw us up into His own life.

God indeed is a good father, who gives good gifts to His children. Through the one righteous man, He has found the one for whom He spares the cosmos. And with a love that will not settle at that, through His Son, He adopts us in baptism, fills us with His Spirit in confirmation, and feeds us with His very life in the Eucharist so that we might be drawn up into a life that endures forever.

All of this sheds light on the collect prayer of this Sunday: “O God, protector of those who hope in you, without whom nothing has firm foundation, nothing is holy, bestow in abundance your mercy upon us and grant that, with you as our ruler and guide, we may use the good things that pass in such a way as to hold fast even now to those that ever endure.”

May we use the good gifts of God our Father in such a way that we are people who reflect His mercy and love-in-action in the world because our hearts are set on the things that endure forever.

Father Mark Hellinger is the pastor of St. Jude Catholic Church in South Bend and Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Lakeville.