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

9/2/2014

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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: 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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HECKER REFLECTION: THE COMPLETION OF GOD'S LOVE

7/26/2014

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Servant of God and Paulist founder Father Isaac Hecker wrote:
 

A mother gives of her life to support the life of her child.  Shall not God support in his children the life he has given to them in Jesus Christ?  It is impossible for a soul which avoids serious sin and often receives the Blessed Sacrament, not to make solid, even rapid progress in virtue and the spiritual life.  It is the most efficacious remedy for our spiritual maladies.   By the frequent reception of Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament the way of perfection is shortened, made easier and is safer.  Shortened, because we receive God Himself directly into our hearts.  Easier, because God becomes our strength and the conqueror of our enemies.  Safer, because we depend less on our own strength and more upon God. 
 
There is no living without eating; and the food which we partake of must be of a similar nature as the life it supports.  Therefore the divine life in the soul must languish and die without the divine food of the Blessed Sacrament.  Without the Blessed Sacrament, God’s love and the evidence of His love towards us would have been incomplete.  God instituted the Blessed Sacrament as the completion of His love, the necessary food for the divine life of our souls.
 

Commentary by the Rev. Paul Robichaud CSP:
 
During Servant of God Isaac Hecker’s priestly ministry  (1849-1888) it was the general practice for the ordinary Catholics in America to receive communion only once or twice a year; usually at Christmas or Easter.  The frequent or regular reception of communaion, which Hecker advocates in today’s reflection, was quite rare.  In fact, weekly or daily communion for lay people was often considered presumptuous.  There were several reasons why.  It was expected that you went to confession each time you planned to receive communion so that you would be in a state of grace.  Many 19th century Catholics were not certain whether they were in the state of grace (venial sin) or not (mortal sin). It seemed easier to refrain from communion as it was hard to get to the confessional every time you planned to attend Mass.  The communion fast where you had to abstain from all food and drink after midnight, and the time schedule of early morning Masses, often made it  difficult to get to communion.  You might be able to keep the fast but not get to Mass, or get to Mass but not have kept the fast.  
 
For the average Catholic in the 19th century, receiving communion was an event you had to plan for rather than a habit you regularly practiced.  Sadly many priests did little to encourage people to receive communion with any frequency.  Some priests like Father Hecker encouraged Catholics to receive communion with mixed results.  About twenty years after Hecker’s death, the universal church under Pope Pius X began to encourage ordinary Catholics to receive the Eucharist regularly if not daily, presuming they were free from mortal sin.  The movement slowly picked up steam and between 1926 and 1945 Catholics began to receive communion on a regular basis.
 
In today’s reflection Father Hecker is ahead of his time as an advocate for frequent communion.  Many of the arguments he makes, were adopted forty years after his death by priests and bishops in America.   At the heart of his reflection is a teaching that is quite contemporary.  God feeds us with God’s very life, which is grace.  God continues and completes his love for us through the grace of the Eucharist and it strengthens the gift of eternal life within us.  If you want a spiritual life, begin with the Eucharist and let it renew and strengthen what we have received from the death and rising of Jesus.  It was good advice when Hecker gave it and it is good advice now.
 
(For a discussion on the practice of 19th century communion, see James O’Toole, Habits of Devotion, Cornell University Press, 2004).
 
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: YIELDING TO GOD

7/19/2014

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Servant of God and Paulist founder Isaac Thomas Hecker wrote:
 
We are all willing to give ourselves to God as long as God leaves us alone, our wills untouched.  Yet how can the Spirit of Truth lead us into all truth unless we yield and allow it?  As Francis de Sales wrote, yielding to God is “the virtue of virtues.”  God demands a heroic abandonment of ourselves to His good pleasure.  The measure of that abandonment is the measure of our union with God – our progress.  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 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.  It is converted completely to God.  It ignores, the past, present and future.  It throws itself without reserve into the arms of God.  All that has existence is in God and outside of God there is nothing.  Let it cost what it may.  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 that we have not received by being faithful to God and trusting in His providence?   God has not changed His providence towards us.
 
A Response from the Rev. Paul Robichaud CSP:
 
There is a difference between what we want and what we need.  This is the meeting point, the intersection between our will and God’s will.  In the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus teaches us to ask the Father for our “daily bread.”   What we ask God for is what we need, God providing us with the grace, the peace, the forgiveness, the hope and the perspective to grow in faith as children of the Father.   But if we are honest with ourselves and God we know there maybe other things that we want.  And some of what we want from God’s perspective, we just don’t need. 
 
This creates the clash of wills that Servant of God Isaac Hecker writes out in today’s reflection.  To develop a spiritual life, to work at a relationship with God means that our will and God’s will are going to differ.  Father Hecker reminds us that we need to yield to God’s providence, God’s will for our lives.  Ultimately happiness happens when our will and God’s will is aligned together.  Hecker suggests that the more we yield to God, the deeper our faith becomes.  To go back to the Lord’s Prayer, we begin it by praying, “Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.  Learning to let go and learning to trust that God will lead us through the difficult moments of our lives.  “Let it cost what it may,” he says, “ Let us throw all our care upon God and put our confidence in him.”.  Learning to trust God is the way to deeper faith and a richer prayer life is the advice Father Hecker offers us today.
 
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: CHARITY

7/15/2014

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Servant of God Isaac Thomas Hecker wrote:
 
It is through Charity that one learns to forget oneself for Charity has its existence not “in” but “out” of self.  God is Charity and the more charitable we are the more we are like God, and as thing that are alike readily unite, it follows that Charity is the most immediate and expeditious means of our union with God.  It is through the practice of Charity that we learn to forget self and the more one forgets himself the more God is watchful of us.  He who has totally forgotten himself is wholly directed by God. 
 
It is only through Charity that God dwells in us.  A true act of Charity is worth immortality; for it has God at is beginning, middle and end.  He who sees only creatures, who has no other love than human or natural affection – will never do an act of Charity.  For true Charity consists in the perfect forgetfulness of self for the good of another.  The greater cannot lose or forget itself in the lesser or the equal, hence for a perfect act of Charity God must be its object.  Three things are necessary in every act of Charity.  1) the impulse of the Holy Spirit, 2) the forgetfulness of self, and 3) the view of God alone in the object.
 
A Response from the Rev. Paul Robichaud CSP

 
“God is love and whoever lives in love lives in God and God in them.”  Here in the first letter of John (1 John 4:6) the evangelist tells us that when we experience selfless acts of love, we experience God.   Servant of God Isaac Hecker uses the word “Charity” in todays’ reflection. Hecker is talking about a certain kind of love, one that Saint Paul writes about in First Corinthians.  It is a virtue, a selfless act that develops into a habit like its sister virtues, faith and hope.  In Hecker’s day it was easier to speak of this virtue as “Charity” whereas today “Charity” implies a singular act of kindness or an organization that imparts assistance.  So in modern usage I prefer to us the words “selfless love” knowing that we are speaking about the virtue of love.
 
Hecker speaks about selfless acts of love, as this kind of love carries the presence of God, when we experience it we experience God and when we act selflessly and lose ourselves, God comes into union with us..  As he writes  that it is only in this way that God dwells within us.”  Hecker attempts to explain the dynamic of selfless love where we let go of our self centeredness and our self-interest.  Hecker notes that we cannot lose ourselves completely in another person, we can only lose ourselves in something greater than ourselves and that is God.  Selfless love is at its core an act of loving God through loving our neighbor.
Hecker ends by writing that there are three things that God into an act of selfless love.  First is that the impulse comes from God the Holy Spirit and not from ourselves.  Second that we forget or let go of ourselves.  Finally, that the object of our letting go is God.  For only in God can we truly let go of ourselves.  Here is the dynamic of selfless love, the virtue of love with its companions, faith and hope that Saint Paul writes about to the Corinthians.
 
If you want  to deepen your experience of God, commit some act of love.  So go out this week and be selfless.  Know that when you forget yourself, God not only watches over you but unites with you in a deeper way.  Its always a risk to let go of self but when done with faith and hope, we meet God who seeks to dwell within us.
 
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: NOT YET ANGELS

6/23/2014

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“He who does not pray, that is, has no desire to talk with God, is dead, and lacks both true life and real sense,”  Saint John Chrysostom.
 
“We cannot live on sugar alone however agreeable it might be to the taste, and so it is with the human heart which cannot long sustain so pure a communication with God.  We are not yet angels and until God condescends at times to our weaknesses, we should die with languor and desire.  If I pray for what God wills, I am sure to pray for what God wishes for me, if I pray for what I think God wishes for me: I am not sure I pray for what God wills for me.”
 
Isaac Thomas  Hecker CSP
 
A Response from Paul Robichaud CSP:
 
               Servant of God Father Isaac Hecker begins with a quote from a sermon of Saint John Chrysostom on the necessity of prayer.  When we don’t speak to God in prayer, we become spiritually dead.  For the great saint and bishop of Constantinople, prayer is the way to feed our souls and it nurtures the gift of eternal life that God grants us.  When we stop praying says the saint, eternal life begins to die in us.
 
               Father Hecker adds some interesting insight into the ups and downs of our prayer life as Christians.  We are not yet angels, so while prayer feeds the soul, it takes time in prayer to build up the intimacy that the angels possess when they speak with God. Prayer does not happen in one direction.  We move towards God when we pray and we hope God moves towards us.  Jesus teaches that God does move towards us.  When we fail, God moves toward us in forgiveness.  When we feel empty and tired, God moves towards us with strength and hope.  When we pray, God takes us where we are and brings us to where God is.  Not only is prayer a vehicle to speak with God, it is a movement of God towards us in faith, hope and love.
 
               Prayer is transformative,  In the last part of our Hecker reflection today Father Hecker speaks about the difference between what we hope God wants for us and what God actually wills for us.  If I pray for what God wills for me, I am asking God to bring out his plan in my life.  If I have already decided what I want God to do for me and think of it as what God wishes – what I want God to give me – then I may not be asking for God’s plan for my life.
 
               My advice about prayer is to just pray!  God is always happy to hear from us and prayer is transformative for we grow in prayer when God moves towards us.  In time our wishes bend to God’s will, our intimacy with God will deepen and while we may not yet become angels, we may come a few steps closer.
 
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: HEROIC VIRTUE

6/20/2014

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My God, a saint is like you, as far as it is possible for you to take on human form.  The saint alone is truly free, his actions are eternal and his life universal.  Who knows what sanctity is?  A saint is an” alter Christus” – another Christ.     
 
A saint is all through and all over “heroic.”  There is no exercise of “heroic virtue” without insurmountable obstacles.  Heroism that involves suffering surpasses all other forms of heroism.  This is the heroism that Jesus Christ demands of every one of his disciples. Christ said, “If anyone would be my disciple, let him pick up his cross and follow me.”  A Christian is one who suffers because of his vocation.  The saint lives for eternity in time and he lives for the spirit in flesh, therefore the saint must suffer.
 
Those with courage, aspiration, heroism can be satisfied to the full here.   For within you is the only true battleground; conquer there and you are greater than Alexander or Napoleon.  For vanity conquered one and ambition conquered the other.  But in vanquishing yourself, you vanquish the conquerors of Alexander and Napoleon.


- Servant of God Isaac Thomas Hecker

RESPONSE: REV. PAUL ROBICHAUD, CSP

Pope Benedict XIV (1740-1748) was a canon lawyer who reformulated the process for making saints. His definition of “heroic virtue” as cited here by Servant of God, Isaac Thomas Hecker in his reflection. This is the basic definition of holiness that the Vatican has applies to candidates for sainthood. Putting it in contemporary speech, we would say that heroic virtue motivates a saint is to act promptly, happily and without difficulty, even in the face of insurmountable odds. It is evident in the life of Father Hecker that he believed that God was at work in his life. He surrendered to God’s will; what he called “Divine Providence.” Hecker guided the Paulist Fathers as well as enthusiastically preached the Catholic faith at a time of great anti-Catholic feeling in America. He lived a life of radical hope.
 
Today Father Hecker reminds us that discipleship involves suffering. To live out eternity in our time, to live for the spiritual world in the world of the flesh involves suffering.  Most of us will never be canonized as saints but we like the saints live out our discipleship through our suffering. Hecker spent the last years of his life with what we believe was a form of leukemia that drained his energy. A man of great vision, he imagined projects that he did not have the strength to carry out. Yet despite his struggle with physical illness, he managed to write articles and a fourth or final book as well as address the American bishops at the Third Council of Baltimore and inspire his community to evangelize America. No matter how insurmountable the odds he encountered, Servant of God Isaac Hecker promptly and happily looked to the future with hope.

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: THE SCIENCE OF LOVE PT. II

6/2/2014

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The Science of Love: Part II



“Love” says Saint Thomas (Aquinas) “is a certain affection by which the lover is transformed into the object loved.”  Where two creatures in the same order of creation love each other, there will be a mutual transformation. If the object loved is equal in all respects to the capacity of the lover then a perfect love would give the lover, or if they are both equal to each other, would give the lovers both repose.  But man having something divine in his nature, therefore nothing created can give perfect repose but God.
 
Divine love first enters our souls as a thief; then becomes a tyrant; and finally bestows upon us as a superabundant benefactor a thousand-fold more than we ever had before with life eternal – a spouse. Saint Augustine (of Hippo) said, “Lord give me your love and do with me as You please.”  May we not say as well, “Lord, keep us from offending you, and then do what You please with Your servants.”
John Tauler beautifully says that divine love is a fire which consumes all terrestrial things and produces in man a happy desolation.  “Love consists in loving God without consolations.  One must overcome all to gain all; to gain that precious stone which is God.”

 
RESPONSE: REV. PAUL ROBICHAUD, CSP

Father Hecker begins his “science of love” with God.  Using the writing of Saints Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, Hecker believes that human beings 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 we find it in God.  As we open our hearts to God’s love, our eyes to God’s presence and our minds to God’s word, the spiritual part of our being experiences a sense of purpose, a sense of peace and a true sense of fulfillment.  Our capacity for attraction begins in God.   Then as it grows and develops we begin to find God both around us and in others.

Father Hecker describes the dynamic of how God’s love enters our souls.  Divine love is the very life of God and has the capacity to completely transform us; making us into the person that God in our creation has called us to be.  God enters our souls like a thief in the night, when we least expect it.  God comes to overwhelm us and overcome our defenses.  God then becomes a tyrant, demanding that we change and open ourselves to grace. We are to belong to God alone and God is to be first and foremost in what it is that we do.   Finally when we yield, God becomes our spouse, filling us with his blessings and teaching us to become dependent on his faithfulness and his strength.  Father Hecker quotes the medieval mystic John Tauler, for the fire of God’s love is an internal desolation that burns down our defenses, our self-centeredness and our selfishness.  It cleanses and transforms us.

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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