Servant of God Father Isaac Thomas Hecker, C.S.P.
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HECKER AS SPIRITUAL DIRECTOR PT III: WAITING FOR THE LIGHT

9/29/2013

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Here is some basic guidance from Father Hecker on developing a spiritual life.  This material is primarily drawn from “Father Hecker’s Spiritual Doctrine” as found in Walter Elliott’s The Life of Father Hecker (1891).  Walter Elliott was Father Hecker’s secretary and companion during Hecker’s last years of life.  Elliott wrote, “He (Father Hecker) was always talking about spiritual teaching to whomever he could get to listen… His fundamental principle of Christian perfection may be termed a view of the Catholic doctrine of divine grace suited to the aspirations of our times.  By divine grace, the love of God is diffused in our hearts; the Holy Spirit takes up his abode there and makes us children of the Heavenly Father and brethren of Jesus Christ, the divine Son.  Being in the state of grace is therefore an immediate union of the soul with the Trinity, its Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier.  To secure this union and make it more conscious was Father Hecker’s ceaseless endeavor throughout his life both for himself and whoever fell under his influence.”

Waiting for the Light

Leave much to God’s secret ways. When hearing a confession on the missions, and when about to give absolution, I used to say to myself about the penitent, well no doubt God means to save you, poor fellow, or he would not have given you the grace to make this mission. But how he will save you, considering your bad habits I just can’t see, but then this is none of my business. 
 
Leave much to the natural or acquired inclinations. “It is vain to rise up before the light” (Psalm 127). When God shows the way, you will see, and no amount of peering in the dark will bring the sun over the hills. Pray for light but don’t’ move an inch until you get it. When it comes, go ahead with all your might.
 

What must one do in order to favor the reception of the Holy Spirit and be faithful to the Spirit’s guidance when received? First, receive the sacraments, these divine channels of grace. One can scarcely persevere in living in the state of grace who does not regularly receive Communion. Second, pray, above all the highest form of prayer, the Mass; then meditation and vocal prayer, the Liturgy of the Hours and your own devotional prayer. Third, read spiritual books every day, especially the Bible, the Lives of the Saints and works of spirituality.  But in all of this, pay attention to that steady impelling force underneath these outward things; the inner and secret promptings of the Holy Spirit, this hidden inspiration. Cherish that above all, be obedient to it and seek in the meantime good counsel wherever it is likely to be had.

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RESPONSE: FR. WALTER ELLIOTT, CSP (edited by Father Paul Robichaud CSP): 
 
Trust in your inner inclinations. Father Hecker was not deeply interested in souls who either by temperament or training needed minute and continuous guidance in the spiritual life: to him they seemed to exert so much energy wearing a harness that they had no strength left to pull the wagon. But he would not interfere with them; he knew it was of little avail to try and change them once their actions had become habitual; and he realized that there were some people who just could not get along without them. He was extremely tolerant and if it proved useful to them, then they were well-meaning souls at best. Self-imposed penances, self-assumed devotional practices Hecker mistrusted. He was convinced that the only way to succeed in the spiritual life and succeed perfectly was when the inner attraction was either too powerful or too peaceful to be other than God calling us, or one pointed out by the Church authorities.
 
When Father Hecker was asked for advice on matters of conscience his answers were generally quick and always simple. Yet he often would refuse to answer without time for prayer and thought. He would say, “ I have no light on this matter; you must give me time.” And sometimes he would refuse to answer altogether for the same reason.  One of the things that often annoyed him was when he would speak about the guidance of the Holy Spirit and have people respond with blank silence and stupid wonder, treating his words as beyond the reach of ordinary mortals, intricate in its rules, mystical and visionary. For Father Hecker there was only one simple method, with a minimum of rules, useful for all, and readily understood. 

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HECKER AS SPIRITUAL DIRECTOR PART II: GO TO GOD

9/16/2013

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Here is some basic guidance from Father Hecker on developing a spiritual life. This material is primarily drawn from “Father Hecker’s Spiritual Doctrine” as found in Walter Elliott’s The Life of Father Hecker (1891).Walter Elliott was Father Hecker’s secretary and companion during Hecker’s last years of life.
Go to God, go entirely to God, go integrally to God: behold that is sincerity, complete perfect sincerity.  Do that, and make it a complete continuous act, and you will need no help from me or any creature.  I want to provoke you to do it. That is my whole aim and desire. Just in proportion as we harbor pride, vanity, self-love – in a word, self-centeredness – just in proportion we fail to resign ourselves to God.  Were we completely resigned to God, God would change all that is in us that is in conflict with Him and prepare our souls for union with Him, making us one with Him.
 

God longs for our souls more than our souls can long for Him. Such is God’s thirst for our love that he made all creatures to love Him and to have no rest until they love Him above all things. If my words do not speak to your soul as God’s words and voice, then pay no heed to them. But if they are, then do not hesitate for a moment to obey. If they humble you, what a blessing! For he that is humbled will be exalted.
 

May you see God in all, through all and above all.  May God’s transcendence and God’s immanence be the two poles of your life.

RESPONSE: FR. PAUL ROBICHAUD, CSP

Father Isaac Hecker believed that spiritual direction was the process of pointing someone towards God, getting them oriented to the presence of the Holy Spirit within their souls – and then getting out of the way. Like a driver with a map to point out the route and a full tank of gas, in this case the Holy Spirit, they were on their way to greater union with God. In this passage where Elliott quotes Hecker, the Servant of God is cheering us on to join race.  “Go,” says Hecker, “go entirely to God in perfect sincerity – do that and you need no help from me.”
 
Father Hecker tells us that God thirsts for our love. Our love of God is a response to our creator. God has made us to love him and we remain unsatisfied and unfulfilled until we do. How do we learn to love God? We do so by first experiencing God’s love; by becoming aware of God’s guiding presence in our lives, by His sheltering care for us, by His healing and His forgiveness.   God has created us with the capacity to love Him and God begins the relationship by loving us, so that we can love Him in return. For Father Hecker the spiritual life begins with this realization that God yearns for us to love Him.  We come to understand that our lives will not find completion until our hearts rest in God. Coming to know this truth and deepening our awareness of the Holy Spirit within our souls, we are ready to go, to go to God.
 
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.

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HECKER AS SPIRITUAL DIRECTOR PART. 1: LISTENING TO GOD

9/9/2013

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Learning to listen to God:
 
Here is some basic guidance from Father Hecker on developing a spiritual life.  This material is primarily drawn from “Father Hecker’s Spiritual Doctrine” as found in Walter Elliott’s The Life of Father Hecker (1891).  Walter Elliott was Father Hecker’s secretary and companion during Hecker’s last years of life.
 

Basics for a Spiritual Life: Learning to Listen to God:
 
1. At first, in all your conscious actions, calm your mind. Place yourself in a receiving attitude as a listener. Then you can decide.  Imperceptively and insensibly grace will guide you.
2. Keep your own counsel; don’t care what other people say. Use your own sense and trust in it.  Don’t try to get anyone to agree with you. As no two noses are alike so no two souls are alike for God never repeats Himself.
3. Nobody these days wants God. Everyone has the whole world on their shoulders and unless one’s own petty ideas and schemes win out, so one prophesizes the end of the world! You are on the right road, so push on! Here is our maxim: “Be sure you are right and then act!”
4. How much of the soul that is good and noble is smothered by too much restraint. The whole purpose of restraint is to reject what is false and to correct a preference for a lower good with a higher good. But beyond this, Be free!
5. I know a man who believes that he doesn’t know anything!  In fact, every day he knows a little less than he did the day before.  He hopes to know absolutely nothing on his last day of life. (To place yourself in a receiving attitude is to be empty) O Blessed Emptiness, O Blessed nothingness where we can say “You are my God and my all.”
 
RESPONSE: FR. PAUL ROBICHAUD, CSP
              

Father Hecker had a minimalist understanding of spiritual direction.  As Father Elliott writes, “Hecker’s fundamental rule was to have as little of it as possible.  He started out with the purpose of doing away with method at the earliest moment when it could be safely done.” To be with Father Hecker for spiritual direction meant that eventually the only spiritual director you would end up with would be the Holy Spirit.  Learning to listen.   To empty out the distractions and preoccupations that clutter your mind, in order make space for God’s presence within you.  This allows you to listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit.  This was the process Hecker used in spiritual direction.
 
Hecker was also a realist.  A spiritual life was not an escape but developed in the day to day events of your life.  As Hecker wrote, “It is out of the cares, toils, duties, afflictions and responsibilities of daily life, that we build the pillars of sanctity in our age.”  For Hecker both the responsibilities we face and the opportunities that arise are the basic building blocks out of which our holiness develops.  Virtuous habits then become patterns of behavior and when they are mastered, they become means of grace.
 
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.
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HECKER REFLECTION: SPIRITUAL BASICS

9/9/2013

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Here is a reflection from the 1854 notebook of Father Hecker. It contains thoughts, stories and sayings that he collected for retreat material and spiritual direction:

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. 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?   Use these the end of the summer to deepen your relationship to God.


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.

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