The Paulist Fathers are excited to announce the launching of a new planned giving program: The Hecker Legacy Society.
Read all about it at paulist.org!
Read all about it at paulist.org!
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The following sentences by Servant of God, Isaac Hecker form in a sense, an almanac of independent thoughts that Hecker wrote in one of his notebooks. While they weave very nicely into his spiritual teaching, they stand alone in his writings and we share a few of these today with commentary by Father Paul Robichaud CSP.
HECKER: A man who prays only while in Church or while on his knees, prays but little and not well. Let pilgrims go to Assisi, let pilgrims go to the tombs of the Apostles, let pilgrims go to the Holy Sepulchre of Our Saviour, provided that is, that it leads them to a greater faithfulness to the invitations of divine grace by the Holy Spirit. If outward penitential practices and spiritual exercises do not have this for their aim then they are useless, dangerous and likely to be hurtful. COMMENTARY: The Episcopalian theologian and Scripture scholar Albert T. Mollegen, who I had the privilege of studying with as a seminarian, used to say, “Just pray, start anywhere, God is delighted to hear from you.” Mollegen taught that once you began a dialogue with God, God would invite you to come deeper and your prayer would develop as your relationship with God developed. Isaac Hecker would agree with Mollegen. Hecker’s caveat deals with the question of God’s invitation to come deeper. His concern is that you discover this invitation from the Holy Spirit. If you do not then you get stuck in stage one. The spiritual practices you use to get started in prayer - if they do not lead you to the discovery that God the Holy Spirit is within and inviting you to come deeper – then it is Hecker’s judgment that these practices are useless. HECKER: The two greatest hindrances to perfection is to put off acting on a resolution until tomorrow and waiting for more favorable opportunities. Our motto should be, “Now or Never! Here or Nowhere!” COMMENTARY: Hecker biographer, the historian David O’Brien noted that Hecker was highly organized, a man of detail, He ordinarily thought through his options and planned out his responses. Yet in the most important moments of his life Hecker acted spontaneously and with an immediacy that surprised many people. The decision to seek Catholic baptism, to join the Redemptorists, to go to Rome to see Father Mauron that led to his dismissal are examples of this. Here in his writing we find an explanation. It is “now or never, here or nowhere.” Don’t put off acting on a resolution when informed by the Holy Spirit, you know you what to do. Paulist Father Paul Robichaud CSP is Historian of the Paulist Fathers and Postulator osf the Cause of Father Hecker. His office is located at the Hecker Center in Washington D.C. Father Hecker preached from the pulpit of Saint Paul the Apostle in New York in 1864: Our humanity longed for and needed a closer and easier communication with God. God responded to this deep longing in our nature and has come near to us in the person of his Incarnate Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ. His eyes were open to the beauty of nature. He watched the birds build their nests and listened with delight to their songs. The sowing of the seed, the ripening of the harvest, the plays and dancing in the marketplace; these and all the events of daily life and of human interest attracted his attention and furnished illustrations for his teaching. His heart was alive to feelings for people and sensitive to the obligations of friendship. When the sisters of Lazarus wished for Jesus to visit their brother who was sick, they sent this message, “Lord, the one you love is sick.” When he arrived, Martha said, “Lord if you had been here my brother would not have died.” When Jesus saw her, he groaned and struggled with his human feeling and wept. Jesus was moved to pity for the sick and filled with compassion for the forgotten and poor. There welled up in the depths of his heart, words filled with unfailing comfort and support for all the suffering children of humanity when he said, “Blessed are the poor for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven” and “Come to me all you who are weary and heavy burdened and I will give you rest.” God is no longer shrouded in obscurity, but openly revealed in our sight in Christ Jesus. The God Man Christ is now the perfect pattern of life to us all. In taking our nature God has sanctified all states of life, all our truths, struggles, afflictions, temptations, duties and joys. God does not have to imagine what it is like to be human; for in Christ Jesus God only has to remember. Servant of God Father Isaac Thomas Hecker CSP presented this message in a sermon he delivered in 1864. Jesus Christ is the perfect response to humankind’s need to be understood by God. Judaism and Islam both teach that the relationship between humankind and God is that of a creature encountering a compassionate and loving creator. Christians understand God differently. In Jesus Christ, God has taken on our flesh, seen through our eyes, felt both joy and loss with our heart. God knows what it is like to hunger and thirst, to be tired and to feel alone, to be misunderstood and to suffer and die. God so loves us that God has become like us in all things but sin in the person of Jesus Christ.
This was a comforting message for American Catholics in 1864. The Civil War had dragged on for almost four long years and it seemed to have no end. Catholics in the parish of Saint Paul the Apostle in New York had been of a mixed mind about the war. Many of the Irish immigrants who lived in the parish bounds had watched their male relatives, the potential breadwinners of their families, go off to fight for a cause they neither were committed to nor understood. Many had already died in battle. God could seem very far away. All of us have moments when God seems very far away. No one is immune from this. Blessed Teresa of Calcutta represented God’s presence to the larger world while experiencing God’s absence in her own life. In the moments when we feel the absence of God Father Hecker reminds us that God knows what it is like to be us. Hecker takes it a step further. In whatever situation we find ourselves, in all of the states of life, both the joys and the hardships have been sanctified and can lead us to grace through the humanity of Jesus Christ our Lord. Paulist Father Paul Robichaud CSP is Historian of the Paulist Fathers and Postulator of the Cause of Father Hecker. His office is located at the Hecker Center in Washington D.C. The following text was written by Servant of God, Father Isaac Hecker, as found in his notes for retreats, dated 1854. On Happiness God in commanding us to love Him with our whole heart, mind, soul and strength only enjoined upon us to seek our highest and greatest happiness. God alone is the health of our intelligence and the delight of our will; the completion of our desires, wants and faculties. Our true happiness consists in the simultaneous development of all our faculties directed in the order of divine grace towards their highest end. This end is no other than God; and religion is able to bring the soul in perfect complete relations with God. One may say that the summit of all human perfection and happiness on earth consists in finding the source of all pleasure in the sole execution of God’s will. The end of our intelligence is contemplation, as that of our will is charity. Our blessedness is found in this completion. Paradise was to behold all things in God face to face. Sin caused us to lose this union. Eliminate sin and all affection for it, and this union will again be restored to us. This restoration is the work of the church. For the church not only seeks to save man’s soul for all eternity but also to restore him on earth to his paradisiacal state. For proof of this she puts in God’s hands the lives of the saints. RESPONSE: FR. PAUL ROBICHAUD, CSP
Human beings are incomplete; each of us is a work in process. Because we are incomplete, our search for completion is our search for happiness. If we could only find fulfillment then we would truly be happy and at peace. But there are so many roads to take in our search for happinness. If we could just find the right relationship, that significant other who loves us unconditionally. If we could just find the right job, a work that gives us recognition or purpose. If we could just win the lottery and retire with all the money we need, to do all the things that we want to do. If we were only healthier, or younger, or thinner, or in shape. If we could find that which completes us, we would truly be happy. Servant of God, Father Isaac Hecker in today’s reflection gives us some insight into happiness. What fulfills us is God. What completes us is a relationship with God. As Father Hecker says, “God alone is the health of our intelligence and the delight of our will; the completion of our desires, wants and faculties.” Our faith journey towards God is often the road less traveled but is the pathway to personal happiness. Because human beings are part spirit as well as body, we are by nature spiritual beings. God has made us in such a way that there is a part of us that cannot find peace unless it rests in God. So if you want to be happy, explore your spiritual side. As we open our hearts to God’s love, our eyes to God’s presence and our minds to God’s word, it may take a while for it to sink in but a sense of purpose, a sense of peace and true sense of fulfillment can be ours. Paulist Father Paul Robichaud CSP is Historian of the Paulist Fathers and Postulator of the Cause of Father Hecker. His office is located at the Hecker Center in Washington D.C. The following are unpublished thoughts of Servant of God Isaac Hecker on the spiritual life. Written in July 1860, just before the election of Abraham Lincoln and the coming of the Civil War, these reflections are drawn from his personal notes and contain a great deal of practical advice on developing the spiritual dimension of your state in life. This text is drawn from Hecker’s personal papers under the title, Notes on the Spiritual Life. How many of us have an erroneous view of the object of our present life? When there are trials, afflictions and sorrows; we seek to escape from them or get rid of them. The life of a Christian upon the earth should be free of all that gives pain and trouble and accompanied instead with health, joy and uninterrupted flow of delights. This is a most false view of the Christian life. It is more like that of a non-believer whose does not look for happiness beyond this world. The essence of the Christian life in this world is one of probation, merit and trial. By our being exercised by these virtues that we are made fit for heaven. Christian perfection is obtained through faithful performance of the common duties of everyday life. These duties are imposed upon us by God himself. Our minds and bodies with all of their instincts, powers and organs are designed expressly for their performance and fulfillment. Society (that is the church and state) depend upon their right and faithful performance for their welfare and prosperity. God has written these duties in so plain and large characters in our mental, moral and physical constitution, so that no one can ignore them. God has so constituted human nature that man’s moral nature finds one of the sources of the greatest satisfaction and delight in the fulfillment of these duties of everyday life. RESPONSE: REV. PAUL ROBICHAUD, CSP
Obedience to God is not in conflict with self-reliance and self-assertion. Servant of God, Father Isaac Hecker divides what is within our own judgment and what belongs to the judgment of God, which in turn informs our judgment. God has given us independent lives and independent personalities therefore God expects us to act using our judgment for many of the decisions in our lives. To assert oneself in truth and courage is one of the goals of becoming a mature human being. Faith does not seek to replace or eliminate our intelligence. We are to be obedient to God through faith but this does not mean that we are to be totally submissive to every use of authority. For Hecker such submission is not a virtue and does not encourage us, to develop the courage and fortitude we need to live out our lives in faith. Obedience to God in faith and the development of our own judgment work together in mature people. As Father Isaac Hecker says in today’s reflection,” Faith completes us and gives wholeness to our holiness.” Paulist Father Paul Robichaud CSP is Historian of the Paulist Fathers and Postulator osf the Cause of Father Hecker. His office is located at the Hecker Center in Washington D.C. |
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