Servant of God Father Isaac Thomas Hecker, C.S.P.
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HECKER REFLECTION: TRUSTING IN GOD

8/24/2014

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Servant of God Isaac Hecker wrote:
 
It is the delight of God’s tender and parental heart to care for His children, the work of His hands and the price of the blood of His only begotten Son.  The more we trust in God, the more God will trust Himself to us.  All that God asks of us is to let Him act with full freedom in our regard.  All that God wishes is to make us like Himself - infinitely holy and happy.   God would have us forget ourselves; for self- forgetfulness is the beginning of the life of God in the soul.   In God the soul places all its hopes and desires.   ‘My God and my all” (St. Francis) is the language of the soul converted completely to Almighty God.  It ignores, the past, present and future.  It throws itself without reserve into the arms of God. 
 
Let it cost what it may.  We must be willing to give up what is comfortable in our present and future to the infinitely wise action of Divine Providence (God’s will).  Let us throw all care upon God and put all our confidence in Him.  This is what God wishes of us.  What do we have today that we have not received by being faithful to God and trusting in His Providence?   God has not changed His Providence towards us and we in turn should not change our conduct towards God.  “Know that no one who has hoped in God has been confounded for God is a protection to all who seek Him in truth.” (Psalm 25) “Be stout-hearted and wait for the Lord.” (Psalm 27)
  
Commentary by Rev Paul Robichaud CSP

It is the delight of the Lord, writes Isaac Hecker, to care for us, his children.  How important we are to God.  Twice over he has spent out his love upon us having first created us and later redeemed us through his Son, Jesus Christ.  When we are down and depressed, tired or sad, when we are sick or things are not going well; when we feel alone or we get down on ourselves; how we need to be reminded that we are important to God and how deeply God loves us.
 
What God asks in response to his love is for of us to trust Him, for God is far from finished with us.  God has a plan, or as Hecker calls it, a “providence” for each of us and at the heart of this “providence” is to make us “infinitely holy and happy.”  God wishes to form his children into His own image, to make them like Himself.  But to do this we have to let go.  As Hecker writes, “for self- forgetfulness is the beginning of the life of God in the soul.”  It is letting go of self and yielding to God what ever the cost, real or imagined might be.
 
Trusting in God can be one of the most difficult things we do.  Many of us only do it when there is no other alternative.   It is only then when there are no other good choices left or that we feel we have nothing more to lose that we become resigned to God’s will.  Hecker’s response to this is a challenge to us.  The good life we know and are so afraid to lose has come from God.  He asks “what do we have that has not come by being faithful to God?”  God has not changed his plan for us, which is to make us happy and complete.  Should we not as children of the Father, trust that God’s providence is the way to the Father and follow.
 
It is said that one of Francis of Assisi’s favorite phrases was to say over and over in good times and bad, “My God and my All.”  In these five words of prayer, the great saint of the twelfth century reminded himself and his followers that God is all we need.   From Francis to Hecker to us, nothing has changed.  So be stout-hearted and wait on the Lord.
 
Publishing and disseminating the writing of Servant of God Isaac Hecker is the work of the Office for Hecker’s Cause.  Paulist Father Paul Robichaud, CSP is Postulator of the Cause of Father Hecker. His office is located at the Hecker Center in Washington, DC.
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HECKER REFLECTION: KINGDOM OF GOD

8/18/2014

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Servant of God Isaac Thomas Hecker wrote:
 
Our Lord said, “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all things shall be added unto you.”  He does not say “Seek first the kingdom of God and then seek after what you are in need of.”  No, having found God’s kingdom, nothing can be wanting.  For as Saint Augustine says, “The kingdom of God consists in having all that one desires and in desiring nothing which tends to our own happiness.”  He who has found the kingdom of God has already found all, therefore we must renounce all in order to find the kingdom of God, for out of God there is not true possession, as Saint Paul says, we are as  “having nothing, yet possessing all” (2 Cor. 6:1-10). 
 
Those who are of the world are as if they had all, yet they really possess nothing, for at death they lose all.  It is to contradict the divine order to seek for the things we have need of first; it is equally contrary to God’s will that we should be solicitous of the things we have need of after we have found the kingdom of God.  The first is want of faith and the other is distrust.  Let us then endeavor to he like the lilies of the valley and the birds of the air and we shall be clothed more beautifully and fed more sumptuously than they by Him who created all things out of nothing from pure love.  First seek the kingdom of God.  Our actions will always be disorderly until order is first established in us.
 
A Response from Rev. Paul Robichaud CSP:
 
We have a tendency to see the kingdom of God as a place.  Christians call it the new Jerusalem, the holy city.  But in the gospels, Jesus describes the kingdom as God the Father drawing close to us.   In the Gospel of Luke we find the story of the prodigal son, but it really should be named the loving father.  Seeing his son far off, the father races down to embrace him and bring him home.  This is the Kingdom of God.  God moves towards us restoring the relationship that sin had broken.  Only God could do this by drawing near to us again and God does this in Jesus.  We in turn are called to open our hearts and welcome God into our souls, accepting the gift of reconciliation that can only come from God and taking our place next to Jesus as the children of the Father.
 
Servant of God Isaac Hecker quotes from the sixth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew.  Here Jesus says, do not be anxious for what you need, for God will supply your wants; seek first the kingdom of God and all things will come to you.  As Father Hecker suggests, it’s prioritizing your life.  Let God come first and all the rest will work itself out.   God in himself fulfills all our wants, so to seek first the kingdom is to want no more.  And being set free from want, we in turn are free to take care of others because there is nothing that we need.  Father Hecker cites Saint Paul (2 Cor. 6:10), where the Apostle Paul describes being set free of want by the possession of God.  It’s a wonderful reflection for “we have nothing but possess all.”    Saint John Chrysostom wrote a sermon on this passage of Paul called “True Riches.”  He states that we are all sojourners in this life.  All things are created by God and we have temporary possession of them at best.  For as the saint said, as we pass in death so do our property and possessions pass on to others who in turn ultimately lose possession to others.   All we truly need to be rich is to be possessed by God and be good stewards with what we temporarily have.
 
To seek other things before we seek God and His Kingdom is to contradict the true order, the divine order of things, Father Hecker writes.  And once we have found the kingdom, we need only God to truly be happy and fulfilled.  So living in the kingdom, we are free to use our goods, are talents and whatever else we have in the service of others. So as Hecker says, put God’s order in your life; be possessed by God and be truly rich.  Trust in God and be set free.
 
Publishing and disseminating the writing of Servant of God Isaac Hecker is the work of the Office for Hecker’s Cause.  Paulist Father Paul Robichaud, CSP is Postulator of the Cause of Father Hecker. His office is located at the Hecker Center in Washington, DC.
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HECKER REFLECTION: HAIL MARY

8/13/2014

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Servant of God Isaac Thomas Hecker wrote:
 
Hail Mary full of grace, the Lord is with you.
With God’s fiat the world was created; but with Mary’s fiat God Himself became man, and the lost world was saved.
 
Blessed are you among women.  And blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus.
An archangel visited her, the Holy Spirit overshadowed her, the Almighty God descended into her womb.  When it was told to her to visit her cousin, she could have used all of this as an excuse.  But no, she thought only of her nothingness.  She therefore hastened to visit her cousin.  Indeed, she was the handmaid of the Lord.
 
Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death, Amen.
The Mother of God becomes the refuge of sinners, the servant of all.  What heart is not overcome with joy.  If we are to have the protection of the Blessed Virgin Mary, we must become like her Son, for to gain the affection of a person, we must become like the object of their love.
 
Saint Vincent de Paul says of the Hail Mary, than an angel began it when he saluted the Blessed Virgin Mary; that Saint Elizabeth continued it when she visited her cousin; and that we the church complete it, so that every Hail Mary is inspired by the Holy Spirit.
 
A Response from Father Paul Robichaud CSP
 
As we celebrate the feast of the Assumption, it seems appropriate to publish Father Hecker’s short reflection on the Hail Mary.  The prayer is in three sections.  The first two sections are taken from the Gospel of Luke, and first appeared in the Roman liturgy in the seventh century.  It served as an offertory prayer celebrating the Annunciation, celebrated both on the feast day proper, March 25th as well as the Fourth Sunday of Advent.  It became a popular devotional prayer in the medieval church beginning in the eleventh century and it appeared in the early and various forms of the rosary in the twelfth century.

Luke’s words of greeting from Gabriel seem incomplete when used as a prayer as most prayers contain a petition in their closing.  In a sermon preached on the Annunciation in 1427, Saint Bernadine of Siena added the words, “pray for us>”  This was expanded into its present form and approved by Pius V in 1568.
 
Father Hecker reflects on the three parts of the prayer.  The greeting of the angel Gabriel reminds us of the importance of Mary’s fiat or “yes” in salvation history.  Father Hecker parallels the fiat or “let it be done” to similar words spoken by God the Father in the creation.  Here he links the creation of the world to the new creation of the Incarnation of Jesus.  To demonstrate that the Hail Mary is a living prayer of the church, the prayer as Hecker notes, quoting Saint Vincent de Paul, continues in the greeting of Elizabeth and the petitionary prayer of the church both present and future.  Father Hecker then adds that when we pray to the Blessed Mother for protection, we should accompany our petition with an effort to be more like her Son.  The prayer while focused on the Blessed Mother also becomes a Christ centered prayer, for it encourages us to be more like Christ.
 
Publishing and disseminating the writing of Servant of God Isaac Hecker is the work of the Office for Hecker’s Cause.  Paulist Father Paul Robichaud, CSP is Postulator of the Cause of Father Hecker. His office is located at the Hecker Center in Washington, DC.
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