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

12/20/2013

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The following are unpublished thoughts of Servant of God Isaac Hecker. This text is drawn from Hecker’s personal papers under the title, Notes on the Spiritual Life. It was 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 life. He begins by talking about finding God in the very nature of the work you do.

Asceticism

God does not despise what He created:
 
Calvinistic views have crept into asceticism and exaggerate human depravity. Renounce the world!  Abandon your Reason! Uproot your passions! Our Lord does not tell us to close our eyes to the beauty of the world rather he invites us to the contrary. “Behold the lilies of the field.”  God does not despise what He created.  True devotion does not despise the beauties of nature.  The object of asceticism is not the destruction of our nature but the restitution of its relationship to all things.   
 
There are persons who imagine that you cannot have holiness without destroying something, whether it is the impulses, instincts, the propensities of our nature. Someone cannot be a saint unless they neither eat or drink or sleep or shut their eyes to the beauty and the glories of God’s creation.
 
It is true that these practices may be found among the lives of the saints, but these are exceptions.  Sanctity by no means requires these extraordinary things and many of the saints who did these were the most natural people in the world. You will not find a soul more alive to the beauties of nature than Saint Francis of Assisi who like the psalmist, composed a song calling on all nature to praise and bless its maker; who called on the elements of nature in affectionate terms such as brother and sister, and when near death sent to a message to a lady in Rome to make him some cakes as she had when he visited her home.
RESPONSE: FR. PAUL ROBICHAUD, CSP

Servant of God Isaac Hecker challenged the influence of Calvinism in American thought; for it was a dominant element in the Protestant Christianity of his time. For Hecker human rights derived from the idea that people were basically good and would grow to be even better through the exercise of freedom.  Yet John Calvin held that humankind was depraved and sinful. Father Hecker taught that in Catholic thought people were considered good; for they had been born again in baptism and made new. Unlike Calvin, baptism was open to all in Catholic thought and therefore made Catholicism a better choice to be the principal religion of the American people. People were free because they were basically good and their goodness grew in the exercise of their freedom. This was both American and Catholic.

In this Christmas season we celebrate the good news that God had become human in Jesus Christ so that humankind could be like God. This message of Christmas is at the heart of the Catholic faith and at the heart of Catholic spirituality. Father Hecker reminds us in today’s reflection that holiness is found all around us; for grace is present in the things that God has made. God has made us and we can find in ourselves that same grace present in creation. God does not seek to destroy our nature but to restore it.  Let us take this message of Christmas into the new year.

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: LIVIING IN THE WORLD

12/10/2013

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The following are unpublished thoughts of Servant of God Isaac Hecker.   This text is drawn from Hecker’s personal papers under the title, Notes on the Spiritual Life.  It was 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 life.  He begins by talking about finding God in the very nature of the work you do.
 
On Living in the World:
 
Wealth of itself is not an evil but the abuse of it is.  Wealth can be used to great merit, equal to the virtue of poverty.  The mission of those who live in this world is to do good rather than to live a strict religious life.  Doing good with one’s wealth lights a candle in our world.  It can be more believable to people than the witness of religious or priests.  Why?  Because when priests do good, they are doing their job.  Their witness is their profession, their bread and butter, not so with people who live in the world, no selfish motive can be attributed to them. 
 
What we need in our society is upright merchants, high minded lawyers, Christian statesmen, people with high Christian moral standards in every state of life.  They are as necessary to our society no less than holy learned priests are necessary to religion.  Let it not be said that there is no room to practice heroic virtue in the world.  No room?  Here are aims worthy of the noblest ambition of men.  We want men who will spurn bribes in our legislative halls, who will not violate by their votes the sacred laws of religion, who have the courage to practice their religion in every station in life, who will be seen in the Church on Sundays, who frequent the sacraments. 
 
We enjoy the privileges of the Church, of our society, and of our political government and we forget how much labor, how much sacrifice and how much blood these great institutions cost.  Nor do we often think of what these require for their continuance.   Few see it as a matter of duty to aid in sustaining the Church, to defend the virtues on which our society is based, or to make it a matter of conscience as to how they cast their ballot.  Yet these are the essential duties of every living man and woman.

RESPONSE: FR.  PAUL ROBICHAUD, CSP

The late Nelson Mandela had every reason to be resentful.  From the age of forty until he was seventy, he lived in a small cell on a prison island off the coast of Capetown.  Trained as a lawyer, he had originally been an advocate for non-violence against the state sponsored system of apartheid.  A horrific attack on non-violent protestors in Sharpsville, South Africa in 1960 by a government police squad had hardened his heart.  He began to advocate for violence and was arrested and tried for treason in 1961.  When he came out of prison twenty-seven years later, he could have continued the cycle of violence.  Instead he became a symbol of reconciliation, forgiving those who had imprisoned him.  In this process he became the “father” of a multi-racial South Africa and led his people towards a democratic and peaceful future.  One life can make a difference.

Servant of God Isaac Hecker reminds us in today’s reflection that one life can make a difference.   Hecker tells us that if we seek to deepen our spiritual lives, the starting point is found in what we do.  Spirituality is not divorced from our day to day lives but emerges out of the actions, decisions and attitudes that we bring to the events of our lives.  The very act of getting out of bed and beginning our day, going to work, caring for the people and things around us is a spiritual activity.  To act responsibly, to nurture others, to make ethical decisions, to be generous and to forgive is the basis from which we develop our spiritual lives.   As Father Hecker says, money and its use can be a spiritual act if we spend it to do good and make out world a better place.

I am sure they were days when Nelson Mandela living in an eight foot by eight foot cell for twenty-seven years, felt that what he did, was of little consequence to the outside world of Robben Island prison.  His story reminds us that all of our actions when directed to make a better world matter greatly.   

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 PT.V: TRANSFORMATION

10/7/2013

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Transformation by grace;

Self-love (selfish acts, self-centeredness) is like a cancer whose roots extend to the most delicate fibers of our mental and moral nature.  Divine grace can remove them but slowly and painfully; the more subtle the selfishness the more painful the cure.

How can the intellect be brought under the direction of divine grace except by reducing it and how can this be done without placing it in utter darkness?  How can the heart be filled with divine love if it is already filled?  How can it be purified except by dryness and bitterness?  God wishes to fill our minds and our hearts with divine light and love to deify our nature, to make us one with God whom we represent.  How can God do this except by removing from our souls all that is contrary to God?

All your difficulties are favors from God but you see them from the wrong side.  You speak of them like a block of marble that is being chiseled would speak, not realizing that you are being transformed into a sculpture.  When God purifies the soul, it cries out like a small child that is having his face washed. The soul’s attention must be turned away from what is happening around us and turned inward towards God in order to come into union with Him.  This transformation is a great, painful and wonderful work.  And it is all the more painful and all the more difficult in proportion to the soul’s attraction to transitory things.

RESPONSE: FR. PAUL ROBICHAUD, CSP

A reflection on the Incarnation found in the preaching of the early fathers of the Church, especially Saints Athanasius and Augustine states that God has become man in Jesus Christ so that we in turn may become like God.  Jesus has come to make us children of the Father filled with divine light and love.  In our reflection today from Servant of God, Isaac Hecker, he tells us that the process of our transformation in Christ is a painful experience.  The more our minds and hearts are filled and are focused in the wrong direction, the more difficult and the more painful is the process of transformation by grace.  Father Hecker says that God seeks union with us through grace.  God seeks to dwell within our very being and in that process we are transformed.  But if our minds and hearts are full, there is no place for God just as there was no place for the holy family when they arrived at Bethlehem. 

Oftentimes in our lives we go through periods of emptiness, frustration and aloneness.  These difficult moments seem to happen to us as a part of our humanity.  We see them as loss.  Father Hecker suggests they just might be cathartic – an emptying experience which God uses to transform us.  He reminds us that oftentimes at our core of our being is self-centeredness and self-importance.  But we have to get over ourselves if we are to make room within for God.  We see the difficult moments of our lives as pain and loss, where Father Hecker sees them as gain.  He says, “all your difficulties are favors from God.”  Like a chisel on a block of marble, what is being cut away is making us new and empowered.  We feel the sharpness of the chisel, God sees the beauty of what He is creating.

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 PT IV: GOD'S GUIDANCE

10/3/2013

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Here is Father Hecker on developing a spiritual life.  This material is drawn from “Father Hecker’s Spiritual Doctrine” as found in Walter Elliott’s The Life of Father Hecker (1891).

God’s Guidance
 
God’s guidance is of two kinds: one is of God’s external providence in the circumstances of life; the other is internal in the direct action of the Holy Spirit on the human soul. There is great danger in separating these two. The key to many spiritual problems is found in this truth: the direct action of the Holy Spirit upon the soul, which is interior, is in harmony with God’s external providence. Sanctity consists in making them identical as motives for every thought, word and deed in our lives. The external and the internal are one in God and consciousness of both is to be one divine whole in man. To do this requires heroic life sanctity.
 
St. Alphonsus says, “all sacraments of the Church, her authority, prayer both mental and vocal, spiritual reading, fasting and devotion, have for their end and purpose to lead the soul to the guidance of the Holy Spirit.” St. Alphonsus says in his letters that the first director of the soul is the Holy Spirit. “The guide to the soul is the Holy Spirit and the criterion or test of possessing that guide is the divine authority of the Church.” 
 
The holy Council of Trent teaches that without an interior movement of the indwelling Holy Spirit no act of the soul can be meritorious of heaven. It bases human justification on an impulse of the Third Person of the Trinity. This impulse precedes the soul’s acts of faith, hope and love and of sorrow for sin. The first stage then is the entering of the Holy Spirit into the inner life of the soul. The Holy Spirit is received by the sacramental grace of baptism and renewed by the other sacraments; also in prayer, hearing sermons, reading the Scriptures or devout books and on occasions; extraordinary or ordinary, in the course of daily life. Each movement of virtue, especially love, hope, faith and repentance is made because the Holy Spirit has acted upon the soul in an efficacious manner.

RESPONSE: FR. PAUL ROBICHAUD, CSP

For Servant of God Isaac Hecker, the movement of God’s Spirit in our lives, or what Hecker calls “God’s guidance,” happens in two ways, internal and external. God’s Spirit dwells within us through baptism and moves and prompts us towards acts of faith, hope and love. At the same time, externally God speaks to us in the circumstances of our lives.  God guides us internally and externally. Father Hecker says that these two paths of God’s guidance should never be separated but rather should merge together within our spiritual lives. “the external and internal are one in God.” And for Father Hecker they should be one in us.
 
This begins internally when the Spirit which we have received in baptism moves us to acts of faith, hope and love. To this Father Hecker adds, repentance of sin. As we open ourselves to the experience of God’s internal promptings, so virtue or the disposition to do good, grows in us. Virtue becomes habit forming as we grow in grace. The other sacraments as well as spiritual exercises such as prayer and spiritual reading become means for the Spirit to deepen His presence and His guidance within us. At the same time Father Hecker reminds us that just as the sacraments are external signs of an internal action of God, so the internal and external should not be separated. God is at work in our lives, guiding us in the ordinary and extraordinary events of our daily lives. As we grow in holiness so we seek to merge the internal and external guidance of God. As Father Hecker says, this much more difficult task requires heroic (far more than ordinary) holiness. It represents an ultimate challenge in our lives to grow in God’s 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 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 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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HECKER REFLECTION: WHY ARE SOME CHRISTIANS UNHAPPY?

7/30/2013

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The following reflection is taken from a sermon entitled, “How to be Happy,” that Father Hecker preached at the Paulist Mother Church in New York City, the Parish of Saint Paul the Apostle on New Year’s Day 1863. This sermon was published in a Paulist sermon collection in 1864.

Our essential happiness in heaven consists of friendship and union with God. Is this not the privilege of all Christians who dwell upon the earth? So why are some Christians unhappy? There are Christians who know what they are here for. Everything that is true, good and noble within them urges them to comply with their religious commitments. They see that all nature around them is happy and sings for joy because it fulfills the end for which it was designed. When they enter into the church the baptismal font reminds them of the holy vows and promises made to keep God’s law and serve God. The confessionals speak to their conscience of guilt and unpardoned sin. The altar speaks to their heart the words of the Lord, “Unless you eat of the flesh of the Son of Man, you shall have no life in you.” They owe the practice of their religious duties to God, to themselves, to their families, to their friends, to society and to their country; for all of these have a right to our good example. Who can resist God and have peace.
 
There is another class who aim at being practical Christians. They seek to observe God’s commandments, to receive the sacraments and to be good Christians. The only problem is that they frequently forget their good intentions and fail to keep them. They are led astray by the passion of anger or avarice or sensuality. Solely for the purpose of gratification they break God’s law, violate their faith and rob their souls of peace and friendship with God. This leaves them with no true happiness. They recover and fall repeatedly, like a ship that springs a leak in almost every storm; their final ruin is more than likely. True happiness comes from the practice of those virtues which lead the soul constantly nearer to the great end of existence. How can one be happy who sees before him only impending loss?

RESPONSE: FR. PAUL ROBICHAUD, CSP
 
Servant of God Isaac Hecker reminds his congregation that a relationship with God is the basis by which we understand our purpose in this life and find true happiness in what God has planned for us.  Why are Christians unhappy? Because they lose their grounding in God. In a slightly different context a contemporary theologian said much the same thing  - man’s happiness is found in God.   Here are the words of another pastor recently preached to his congregation.
 
“Man is religious by nature. The image of the Creator is impressed upon his being and man feels the need to find light to give a response to the questions that concern the deep sense of reality – a response that he cannot find in himself, in progress, or in empirical science. Religious man passes through all of human history. In this regard, the rich terrain of experience has seen the religious sense develop in various forms, in an attempt to respond to the desire for fullness and happiness.  “Digital man” like the cave man seeks religious experience.  
 
What is man? What is the meaning, the aim of our life? What is moral good, what is sin? What purpose does suffering serve? Which is the true road to happiness? Man knows that by himself he cannot respond to his own fundamental need to understand. He needs to open himself to something more, to something or someone who can give him what he lacks. Only in God who reveals himself does man’s seeking find fulfillment. Let us learn to recognize in silence, in our own hearts, his voice that calls us and leads us back to the depths of our existence, so the source of life, to the source of salvation to enable us to go beyond the limits of our lives and open ourselves to God’s dimension, to the relationship with Him who is Infinite Love.”
 
Pope Benedict XVI spoke these words in Saint Peter’s Square in May 2011.

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, DC.
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HECKER REFLECTION: BEING HAPPY

7/5/2013

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This series of Hecker Reflections are primarily drawn from his sermon collection. The following reflection is taken from a sermon entitled, “How to be Happy,” that Father Hecker preached at the Paulist Mother Church in New York City, the Parish of Saint Paul the Apostle on New Year’s Day 1868. This sermon was published in a Paulist sermon collection in 1869.

The Gospel we preach is not one of gloom and despair but of glad tidings and great joy. The creed we hold teaches us that God is the creator of heaven and earth, the visible and the invisible. Our Gospel and our creed are in accord with the Psalmist when he says, “Sing joyfully to God all the earth. Serve the Lord with gladness. Come into His presence shouting for joy.” This is the Gospel that Christ came into the world to teach. 
 
Our essential happiness in heaven consists of friendship and union with God. Is this not the privilege of all Christians who dwell upon the earth? In heaven we shall gaze upon Christ in the light of glory? True but is not God whom Christians contemplate through the light of faith, the same God?  There is not difference except that what we see here obscurely by the light of faith, we shall see clearly face to face, by the light of glory. The aim of the Gospel is not to separate heaven from earth or earth from heaven, the object of the Gospel is to bring them together, unite them and make them one, to establish the kingdom of God, “upon earth as it is in heaven.”

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RESPONSE: FR. PAUL ROBICHAUD, CSP
Servant of God, Isaac Hecker took as his theme on New Year’s Day 1868, the traditional greeting, “Happy New Year” and asked his parish what they meant when they shared this wish with other people.  In other words, when you wish someone happiness, what are you wishing for? What makes us happy? 
 
Father Hecker begins by explaining that the Christian Gospel and creed are messages of joy and in them we can find the key to happiness. They teach that the relationship between God and humankind was broken due to sin. No matter how humankind might try, the chasm between God and man could not be breached by humankind. Into this chasm between heaven and earth, God has crossed over out of love for us and revealed himself to us in the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ, the Son of God has reunited heaven and earth by his coming as man. Now it is possible to grown in relationship with God.
 
Father Hecker teaches that happiness essentially consists of union with God. This is now possible because God in Jesus Christ has restored the relationship between heaven and earth. Happiness is something we need to work at. We are unfinished works of God who live and move in the union of heaven and earth. Happiness comes from understanding our purpose in this world as channels of grace made possible in 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 the 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: PRAYER IS THE LIFE OF THE SOUL

6/24/2013

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The following reflection is taken from a sermon entitled, “The Battle of Life,” that Father Hecker preached at the Paulist Mother Church in New York City, the Parish of Saint Paul the Apostle in 1865. This sermon was published in a Paulist sermon collection in 1866.

You say you have no time to pray! Have you time to breathe? Prayer is to the life of the soul as breathing is to the life of the body. It is absurd to say you do not have the time to pray, as it would be to say that you have no time to breathe. Pray when you rise and dress, pray when you are on the way to work, or to your place of business, or on your return home or before you go to bed. Lift up your hearts to God at intervals during the day. These short aspirations of the soul are like swift arrows which pierce the clouds and penetrate to the very throne of God. Believe me if you practice recollection and mortification to the degree you are able, in a short time, no exercise will be as easy as prayer.
 
How can you practice recollection? You cannot go into solitude as you have a family to see after and a business to attend and other obligations to fulfill. Make a desert where you are. Avoid to the extent you are able unnecessary distractions. Attend Church and in this way you will keep God’s presence in your heart. When the parents of Saint Catherine of Sienna sought to prevent her from following her religious vocation, she made a place in her heart where she prayed and meditated and dwelt with God in peace.  While her hands were occupied with external things, her heart was her oratory.
 
You must practice mortification. It is a great lesson to learn how little of material support is necessary for our physical life. They do not know how much of what they think is necessary is in fact superfluous. Remember what you deprive the body of, you give to the soul. Govern your appetite, be more temperate in your drinking, less indulgent in your sleeping and you will learn how much you deemed necessary as not indispensable. You will pray as easily as you breathe; for recollection and mortification lead to prayer and prayer aids in recollection and mortification.

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RESPONSE: FR. TOM RYAN, CSP
Our tendency is to think of praying in terms of speaking words to God. But Fr. Hecker clearly has something much broader in mind than that in telling us to pray when we rise and dress, when we’re on our way to work, to pray during the business day and on our way home. He’s talking about what Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection called “practicing the presence of God.” He’s inviting us to live with an awakened heart.
 
“Spirituality” is an “in” word in our times, but what does it really mean? The essence of it is this: A growing intimacy with God experienced through the people, places, events, and things in our daily living. And that clearly is what Hecker is talking about with his language of “short aspirations to God” and “lifting up our hearts to God at intervals during the day.” His example of Catherine of Sienna makes clear that it’s not just about going to Church on Sunday. It is rather about letting your heart be your oratory every day of the week, and letting your prayer be as natural as breathing.
 
His language of recollection and mortification is less current today. Recollection might be described as those moments when we enter the oratory of our hearts and make conscious contact with the presence of God dwelling within. And mortification refers to dying to our sensory appetites or self-centered tendencies. It was considered a discipline of the spiritual life and had a penitential resonance to it. But when you get right down to it, what is discipline all about? It’s about liberation from the things that bind us so as to be freer to follow the deeper movements within our hearts. Discipline is for discipleship. When the appetites of our bodies, the movements of our hearts and the thoughts of our minds are subject to the directives of the Holy Spirit within, our prayer throughout the day will become as natural as breathing.    
 
Paulist Father Thomas Ryan, CSP is Director of the Paulist Office for Ecumenical and Interfaith Relations located at the Hecker Center in Washington, DC.  He is the author of numerous articles and some fourteen books with a specialty in the area of spirituality.
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