Servant of God Father Isaac Thomas Hecker, C.S.P.
Follow Father Hecker
  • Home
  • Life and Cause
  • Hecker Reflections and Blog
  • Prayers
  • Paulist Fathers
  • Contact
  • Links

HECKER REFLECTIONS: HOPE

10/29/2014

0 Comments

 

Servant of God Isaac Hecker wrote:

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.”

A Response from Father 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. 
 

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.

0 Comments

TRUE WISDOM AND HUMILITY

10/20/2014

0 Comments

 
Servant of God Father Isaac Hecker wrote:
 
He who is not in his place in the order of things established by God will see all things in disorder. Being in one’s place in the order of grace is humility. Humility therefore is necessary for science and true wisdom. Science is the knowledge of how things are related and wisdom is the contemplation of ultimate causes.

Nothing can be said to be thoroughly known until we find out its cause. So the one who is ignorant of God, and who does not recognize God in His creatures and creation, understands nothing. The value of time is unknown to the one who does not know God; for he will never judge and esteem things at their true value.  Ignorance is the effect of this intellectual blindness caused chiefly by pride,  Humility is the antidote to pride and restores to the soul the light of God, in and by which we see all things as they are and in their true relationships.

Saint Augustine says, “Let me know myself as you know me.” Only the one who knows God can be truly wise according to the words of Saint Thomas (Aquinas) “Man, when he regards absolutely the things that God is to say, the highest cause of the whole of the universe, is called wise.” We are truly wise when we arrive at the knowledge that we are fools and truly learned when we acknowledge that we are ignorant.”  “O Lord, you are all and everything else is nothing.  We have no other lesson to learn than this: “ I beheld the earth and it was without form, and the heavens and there was no light in them.”  (Jeremiah 4:23)


RESPONSE: FR. PAUL ROBICHAUD, CSP


Wisdom literature in the Old Testament developed after the exile when Jews now far away from Jerusalem sought to be faithful and so began to compile instruction for retaining Jewish identity.  Wisdom consisted in how to act and how not to act in various situations based upon lived experience.  God operated through the laws of nature and society, rewarded the good and punished the bad in the afterlife.  In the New Testament Jesus the teacher is the personification of wisdom, like the rabbis of wisdom literature, Jesus teaches how his disciples are to act and not act and in the New Testament this is done in love.  Saint Paul also adds his own understanding of his preaching of the cross of Christ which is the wisdom of God but seems like foolishness to his Greek Roman world.

In modern usage, wisdom means perfect understanding and is tied to science, culture and philosophy. To be wise is to draw across these disciplines to lead a happy and successful life. How to act and how not to act, remains at the core of wisdom as it is understood over the centuries.  For Servant of God Isaac Hecker, living in the 19th century wisdom had another dimension, that of contemplation.  For Hecker God was at the center of all creation, value and virtue and at the heart of all serious study.  Hecker’s love of contemplative prayer fit perfectly into his understanding of wisdom.  God is the source of all truth and knowledge, so to focus on God’s presence is to direct one’s attention to the source of all wisdom.  Hecker equates wisdom with holiness.  The first step is found In humility where one recognizes their need for God,  By approaching God with an open heart one has the capacity to grow in wisdom and holiness through contemplative prayer.  For Hecker you find wisdom when you find God and because God is accessible, so is wisdom.

Publishing and disseminating the writing of Servant of God Isaac Hecker is the work of the Office for Hecker’s Cause.
0 Comments

HECKER REFLECTION: PURPOSE IN LIFE

10/11/2014

0 Comments

 
Servant of God Isaac Thomas Hecker wrote:
 
What is the end of man?  That which will satisfy him?  Will riches, pleasures, travel, society or knowledge?  There is no truth in life except living for eternity.  Jesus Christ is once and for all, and for all eternity, the end of man.  Therefore the least act done in imitation of Jesus Christ is of more value than a life spent in attainment of the highest end of mere mortal endeavor.  A glance at the crucifixion has a merit that the knowledge of all human philosophy and graceless science cannot possibly give.         
 
Our object in this world is to know, love and serve God.  We cannot know God without loving Him; we cannot love God without wishing to serve Him.  We must overcome ourselves by suffering in imitation of Jesus Christ; this is our work and our destiny on earth.  The end of man and all his efforts is contained in the words of the Lord’s Prayer, “Thy will be done on earth as in heaven.”


RESPONSE: FR. PAUL ROBICHAUD, CSP


Christians believe that humanity has been created in the image of God by the Father; redeemed by Jesus the Son; and with the coming of Pentecost, has the capacity to be the vessel of God the Holy Spirit.  Our purpose in life is linked to God, or as Servant of God Father Hecker writes, “there is no truth in life except living for eternity.” 
 
Recently I house-sat for some friends which included their dog, an English Springer Spaniel named Jimmy.  This beautiful animal was initially bred to retrieve aquatic birds for hunters and while Jimmy is not used for this original purpose, he loves nothing better than to dive into the family pool to retrieve a frisbee or a ball.   He is consumed with retrieving toys, leaving a frisbee at you feet and patiently staring at you, waiting with one single purpose; for you to throw it, again and again across the pool.
 
I was thinking as I read Father Hecker’s words, how our world would be such an amazingly grace filled place if each of us lived in such a way that reflected our eternal purpose with the same intensity and patience as Jimmy and his frisbee.  We have been given an extraordinary purpose in life, how wasted our lives could be if we don’t act in imitation of Jesus 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.
0 Comments

HECKER REFLECTION: TRUST IN GOD

10/2/2014

0 Comments

 

Servant of God Isaac Thomas Hecker wrote:
 
Our hope is not in ourselves but in God the Most High; for God orders all things with power and disposes of them with gentleness.  We must not look to human kind, but to the will of God which as Saint Alphonsus Liguori says, “sets all things to right.”  The more helpless our situation, the more we should trust in God!  Why?  Because God created us out of nothing by His goodness alone.  Every workman loves the work of his own hands.   The nature of goodness is to expand, to express itself.  It surrounds us to make us happy.
 
Our confidence should increase with the rage of the storm and our joy should be greatest when danger is present; because God is the protector of all who trust in Him.  God will clothe us more beautifully than the lilies, feast us more sumptuously than the birds, esteem us to be of more value than the sparrows and not forget all of our wantsl.  Not even a hair on our head falls to the ground without God’s notice.  He will prepare us the right path when we are lost and be our defender in times of trouble.  The Lord is our light, our hope,  our strength, our life and our love.  The Lord gives to those in need with superabundance.  And in due season he will give us the fullness of our desires.  The Lord is our protector of whom should we fear?


RESPONSE: FR. PAUL ROBICHAUD, CSP

“Our hope is not in ourselves but in God” says Servant of God Isaac Hecker.  Before we congratulate ourselves for a job well done or get down on ourselves for problems we face, it is important for us to realize we are not alone.  God is there watching over what God has created.  Father Hecker reminds us that our origins are in God, for we are not only made in God’s imagwe, we were fashioned by God.  Hecker writes, “every workman loves the work of his own hands.”  That was brought home to me recently when a close friend of mine who restores classic cars took me out in his 1931 Packard roadster. He had spent 10 years rebuilding this beautiful automobile and on a magnificent  summer  day we motored through small towns in southern New England.  It was evident to me that my friend and his car had become one entity.  So it is with God and us, God made us, is within us and acts through us.  God seeks to unite with us if only we open ourselves to Him.
 
Father Hecker goes further for he encourages us to trust in God’s presence, especially in when we face critical and difficult moments.  The greater the danger the more we need to trust.  This fundamental trust in God is not just something Father Hecker writes about but it comes out of his life experience.  Hecker has been characterized as a man of incredible hope.  As he often said, the best times lie ahead and not behind.  He speaks poetically paraphrasing  Matthew 6:28.  God will clothe us more beautifully than lilies and answer all of our wants.   So let us be people of hope.  Let us take seriously the promise of Jesus that he has overcome the world – and that includes our personal worlds.  Let God be our hope and sour strength, our light and our love.
 
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.

0 Comments
    Picture

    Categories

    All
    Hecker History
    Hecker Reflections
    Hecker Reflections
    Hecker Writings
    Hecker Writings
    Paulist Fathers
    Paulist Fathers

    Archives

    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    February 2012

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.