Servant of God Father Isaac Thomas Hecker, C.S.P.
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HECKER REFLECTION: EASTER HOPE

3/31/2013

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FROM FATHER HECKER'S 1854 SPIRITUAL NOTEBOOK:

Lack of hope is the most ordinary fault of religious people.  We sin more against hope than any other virtue.  We need to be cheerful and perform frequent acts of encouragement, make it our study and our meditation.  Throw all your care on God and put all your confidence in Him.  This is what God wishes of us.  What have we that we have not received by being faithful to the conduct of His providence?  God has not changed His providence towards us, should we then change our conduct towards Him.  “No one who has hoped in the Lord has been confounded.  God is a protection to all who seek him in truth.  Wait on God with patience; join yourself to God and endure

At the beginning of our spiritual life our soul is like a vessel launched upon a boisterous sea.  After a period of time, we enter the gulf stream of sanctity which leads us to our place of destination – God – even without the need of chart, compass or rudder.  All winds are favorable and we have but repose and to be carried to our goal.  The stiller and quieter we are the more rapidly we advance.  Let us abandon all into the hands of Divine Providence, lead where it will.  Let us endeavor to follow it with the same firm and equal step when it leads through the valley of humility or when it elevates us to the mountaintops of joy.  God will give us great contentment to find the source of all one’s delight and pleasure is in the doing God’s will.


RESPONSE: FR. PAUL ROBICHAUD, CSP

One of the principal virtues that Servant of God Father Isaac Hecker practiced was the virtue of hope.  Living among the Transcendentalists (the spiritual but not religious romantic intellectuals of his day) Hecker refused to give up on organized religion as they had.  In an age of strong anti-Catholicism both in the political and popular culture of his time, Hecker believed this was an opportunity to evangelize Protestant America by boldly preaching the Catholic faith.  Even late in his life when he suffered from debilitating leukemia that often left him without the energy; he often appeared to outsiders and guests as engaged, involved and full of life.  During his most difficult period when he was chronically tired, he still managed to complete the draft of his fourth book God and Man.  Hecker lived the virtue of hope in so many ways, believing that in God’s providence the future God has planned was brighter than the past.
 
“We sin more against hope than any other virtue,” says Hecker the great optimist.   The opposite of hope falls on a spectrum that goes from cynicism to real fear of the future; from giving up and not trying because something looks too difficult to actual fear about the future.  Yet as Christians the Gospel teaches us about the triumph of the Risen Christ and the coming of the Kingdom of God.  We know the story ends with Christ’s triumph therefore we should live in hope with confidence and trust in God. 
 
Father Hecker explains the stages of growing in prayer and how through hope it leads us to greater trust.  The first stage of prayer is difficult as you don’t know whether you are doing or saying the right things; it is like being cast on a boisterous sea.  Prayer leads us towards union with God and as we grow towards God we grow in holiness.  This takes us to the second stage of prayer; the gulfstream of sanctity where we experience the holiness of God.    As Father Hecker says “the stiller and quieter we are,” the more grace takes control.  In the presence of God, we learn God’s will for our lives.  As we grow to accept God’s providence we reach the third stage of prayer which in turn brings us peace and fulfillment in a way nothing else can bring.

Fr. Paul Robichaud is Postulator of the Cause for Canonization of Isaac Hecker. 
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HECKER REFLECTIONS: SUNFLOWER

3/26/2013

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FROM FATHER HECKER'S 1854 SPIRITUAL NOTEBOOK:

Before God shall I fear?   Not at all!  God is the same, yesterday, today and forever. God has deigned to favor me with the consolations of His grace and the embraces of His love.   Should I doubt God’s friendship because I feel deprived of his consolations?  Did He not love me when I turned my back towards Him?  Will He refuse to love me now that I wish nothing so much as to give Him my whole heart? 
 
Man cannot be more generous than God.  Therefore I will say: My God!  I love You above all things.   Do what you please with me.  Nothing shall separate me from my love for You.  I love you because You are loving, beautiful and good, though I see You not.  God does love me; for as Saint Bernard says, he who truly loves never doubts being loved.  I love God; therefore God surely loves me. 
 
The sunflower follows the course of the sun; and at night closes its leaves when the sun disappears.  In the morning at its dawn the sunflower unfolds again its enamored bosom to the gentle influence of the sun.  Faithfulness consists in a sincere, fervent and constant following of the guidance of the Holy Spirit. We should be faithful to the invitations of grace and the conduct of Divine Providence. 

RESPONSE: FR. PAUL ROBICHAUD, CSP

We have all had moments of feeling God’s distance.  Faith is a relationship with the person of God and like other personal relationships the feeling of both closeness and of distance is a part of the experience.   Even the saints, like Saint John of the Cross and more recently, Blessed Teresa of Calcutta wrote about the experience of feeling God’s distance.
 
Servant of God Isaac Hecker addresses this issue.  “Should I doubt God’s friendship because I feel deprived of His consolations?”  Hecker asks.  God is the source of love.  If God has loved us deeply even when we turn away, how much more will God love us when we turn towards Him?   Reversing the great passage from Saint Paul in chapter 8 of Romans, ”Nothing shall separate us from the love of God.”  Hecker writes, Nothing shall separate me from my love for God.  Hecker bases this on a passage from the Cistercian Abbot Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (1090 – 1153) who wrote in his essay, “The Love of God” that  the best way to feel that you are loved is to begin by loving others.  If you love others, the love of God passes through you to the other, and you arrive at the wonderful discovery that you are a channel of God’s love.  God holds us in His love which we are free to accept or reject.
 
To go through life knowing you are loved is a wonderful thing, and for those who follow Jesus we know that God us deeply loves us.  It liberate us, frees us to be faithful and attentive to God’s presence in our lives.  Hecker uses the example of the sunflower to model how we are to be responsive to God.  The sunflower opens to greet the sun each morning and closes when the sun sets each evening.   Lent is a time when we work at being more attentive to God’s grace.  Like Father Hecker let us trust that we are loved and let  this experience teach us how to be more loving in return.

Fr. Paul Robichaud is Postulator of the Cause for Canonization of Isaac Hecker. 

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HECKER REFLECTION: SPIRITUAL BASICS

3/26/2013

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FROM THE 1854 SPIRITUAL NOTEBOOK OF FATHER HECKER:

It is the will of God that we should leave undone what we cannot do without trouble.   There is a point in the spiritual life when God does most for us when we do the least for ourselves.  There are two shoals against which we may make spiritual shipwreck: self-activity and idleness.  Freedom of spirit will guide us safely between these.  For without interior freedom there can be no fidelity to divine grace… for this liberty is of God.  As Paul writes in Romans (8:15) “For you have not received a spirit that makes you a slave to fear, but you have received the spirit of sonship whereby we cry Abba Father.”
 
All that the soul can ask, and what ought surely to be granted, is to follow faithfully the invitations of grace and the impulses of God’s Spirit.  If the soul is guided by the Holy Spirit, it would not do the least thing contrary to faith or the church, for we are taught inwardly by the Holy Spirit and outwardly by the holy church in the same grace. 

RESPONSE: FR. PAUL ROBICHAUD, CSP
 
There are so many forms of Catholic spirituality, it can be hard to choose a particular form to practice.  There are classic traditions of spirituality such as Benedictine, Franciscan, Carmelite, Redemptorist and Ignatian.  There are new approaches from movements like Opus Dei, Focolare, San Egidio, Communione e Liberatione, and the Neocatechumenate.  In the richness of our Catholic faith, just where do we begin to develop a spirituality to guide your prayer and actions?
 
Servant of God Isaac Thomas Hecker goes back to basics.  Christian spirituality begins with the individual soul’s encounter with God.  Jesus has give us the extraordinary gift of calling God our Father who has given us in our creation, the further gift of interior freedom which allows us to respond to the invitations of God’s grace.   Use these gifts says Father Hecker and if your general conduct is attuned to the spirit of God or if you work at a specific form of spirituality and it draws you closer to God, than be assured you are on the right path.  

He goes on to say that two mistakes people make in the spiritual life is attempting to do too little or too much.   The answer lies somewhere in between the two.  Father Hecker reminds us that our spiritual lives are a living relationship with God, sometimes God calls us to act and sometimes God invites us to stop and be still.  It is in our living with God that the dynamics of faith grow guided by the Holy Spirit.

This holy season of Lent provides an opportunity to deepen our spiritual lives in preparation for the celebration of the death and rising of Jesus in Holy Week.  Perhaps we might take a lesson from Father Hecker and examine just how we doing in our response to God’s grace in our lives. Does our present practice draw us closer to God?  Are we doing too much or too little?  Lent is not over yet but Easter is not far off.  Use these closing weeks of Lent to deepen your relationship to God.

Fr. Paul Robichaud, CSP is Postulator of the Cause for Canonization Isaac Hecker. 
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HECKER REFLECTION: BE A SAINT

3/26/2013

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FROM THE 1854 SPIRITUAL NOTEBOOK OF FATHER HECKER:

God would have us be saints, would make us saints but our selfishness prevents God from making us such.  We conduct ourselves as though we were better, wiser, and more powerful than Almighty God.  We cannot make a hair on our heads black or white or add an inch to our stature, yet we act and speak as though the world’s destiny depended on us… God’s dwelling place is in our soul; but we turn God out by our selfishness. 
 
For we shall never become holy without action for God gives us the ability to act in order to love and serve Him.  It is the misdirection we give to our wills through our selfishness that is the origin of evil.  As Saint Denis (the Belgian mystic, Denis the Carthusian, 1402-1471) says, the corruption of souls comes from giving false direction to our actions.
 
We plan, we project, we speculate as if the world was on our shoulders and God was totally gone.  Our misfortune is that in acting in this way we lose God instead of finding him.  The wisest thing we can do is meditate on the folly of the world and above all on our own doings… Our actions must assist and cooperate with the grace of God or it is good for nothing else.
 
RESPONSE: FR. PAUL ROBICHAUD, CSP
 
Today Servant of God Isaac Thomas Hecker reminds us that our actions must assist and cooperate with the grace of God.  God gives us the ability to act in order to love and serve God.  God has given us life and the various elements of our life such as our intelligence, our freedom, our material blessings and our health in order that they may be used in the service of God. 

Father Hecker paints a beautiful image of how when our actions cooperate with grace, how God comes to dwell in our soul.  God would have us be saints says Hecker.  And sadly, the reverse is true as well.  When our actions are governed by selfishness and apathy, God leave us.

In this season of Lent, we are invited to examine our lives and open our hearts to God’s renewing grace; it is a season of conversion and reconciliation.  We are the children of God our Father and the adopted brothers and sisters of Jesus.  As members of God’s family we are to be about the “family business.”  We forgive seven times seventy times; we give our coat as well as our shirt; we walk the extra mile and turn the other cheek.  Why do we do these things?  Because God does them, and as the children of God we are to do what the Father does.  Jesus our brother is the model of how we are to act.  If we want to know how God wants us to act; then look upon Jesus who is the image of the Father and follow his actions.   So let us be saints.  Let us celebrate Lent by allowing God’s grace to renew us and invite God to come and dwell within us.

Fr. Paul Robichaud, CSP is Postulator of the Cause for Canonization Isaac Hecker. 

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HECKER REFLECTION: LENT AND SUFFERING

3/26/2013

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FROM FATHER HECKER'S 1854 SPIRITUAL NOTEBOOK:

We have all eternity to enjoy, but only a few moments to suffer, to testify to our sincere and ardent love for our crucified Saviour and our God. 
 
The disciple is not greater than the Master.  The one who has no cross is no follower of the crucified.  It would be a miracle to find a Christian without a cross, except in heaven.  If you avoid your cross or are unwilling to take it up and follow Jesus, you are not worthy to be a disciple.
 
Our destiny here on earth is this: to conquer the world and ourselves by suffering in imitation of Jesus Christ in order that we might be eternally happy with him forever.  The only true success in this life comes from following Jesus Christ.  If we for a moment seek success elsewhere, it matters not how high or useful it may appear to us, we are deceived and we live and act in vain for Jesus Christ is the only Way, the whole Truth and the true Life.  Therefore we walk astray when we act without Jesus.


RESPONSE: FR. PAUL ROBICHAUD, CSP

Today’s reflection from Servant of God Isaac Hecker addresses a classic Lenten question; how do we as Christians understand human suffering?  Father Hecker begins with the premise that everyone suffers.  No matter how successful or secure you are, there is a basic unfairness that penetrates through all our lives as human beings.  No one who lives in our world escapes from the reality of suffering.  The brokenness of sin in the world seeks to dis-empower us even further.  Because we do not want to suffer, in attempting to escape from it or deny it, we become more broken and needy.  The Scriptures, the Church and most especially the sacraments of the Church seek to empower us.    Instead of running from sin and brokenness, we call on the power of Christ within our souls.  Awakening the spiritual side of ourselves is what Lent is all about.  With and in Christ we take on the suffering found in our lives and go through it with the sure knowledge that Christ has already  overcome it and that he carries us through these moments.  The more we encounter suffering with faith, fear dissipates, hope replaces fear, and we can respond with love.  In this sense our response as Christians to the suffering we encounter in our lives both reflects, mirrors and channels the paschal mystery of Christ which we celebrate in Easter.
 
Father Hecker says, “The disciple is not greater than the Master…. It would be a miracle to find a Christian without a cross…. If you avoid your cross or are unwilling to take it up and follow Jesus, you are not worthy to be a disciple.”   Life is hard and uneven but as Father Hecker reminds us that while everyone experiences the hardness of life, Christians have a way of contexting and transforming their suffering by connecting it to the suffering and death of Christ.   As the brothers and sisters of Jesus, our suffering becomes a part of Christ’s suffering of Christ,  and through Christ’s suffering  God has chosen to redeem the world.  May your experience of Lent deepen your faith, strengthen your hope and support your loving response to others.

Fr. Paul Robichaud is Postulator of the Cause for Canonization of Isaac Hecker. 

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