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

11/18/2014

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Servant of God, Isaac Thomas Hecker wrote on reflecting on passages of ““Showings of Divine Love,” by Juliana of Norwich (1342-1416)
 
The soul is at home in God as a man under his own roof, or a babe is in the arms of its mother.  It is so true that man is not himself till he has found his home: in God.  Mother Juliana wrote: “Highly are we to enjoy that God dwells in our soul; and more highly are we to enjoy that our soul dwells in God.  Our soul is made to be God’s dwelling place: and the dwelling of our soul is God, which is unmade.  It is a high understanding to inwardly see and know that God, who is our Maker dwells in our soul, and it is a higher understanding to more inwardly see and know that our soul which is created, dwells in God’s substance; and so we are what we are, by God.”

(Again Mother Julianna writes) “The cause for which we battle and suffer is the unknowing of love.  For some believe God is almighty and may do all; and that God is all wisdom and can do all; but here is where we fail, not believing that God is all love and will do all.  This unknowing is the greatest obstacle to God’s lovers.”

Quotes from
Isaac Thomas Hecker CSP
 
A Response from Paul Robichaud CSP:
 
Father Hecker whose spirituality was grounded in his belief in the indwelling of the Holy Spirit cites Julian of Norwich’s “Showings.” Julian writes that through the Holy Spirit present in the soul, God the Trinity finds a dwelling place in each of us.  That the very being of God sits within our created being.  But she is not content with the fact that God dwells within us.  Because God has found a dwelling place in our souls, we have within us extraordinary possibility.  Because we dwell in the very substance of God, within each of us is the door, the gateway to God.  Father Hecker, filled with hope and believing in extraordinary possibility, must have loved reading Juliana’s words, “we are what we are by God.”  God continues the process of creating us and bringing us to fulfillment.
 
Father Hecker cites a second text from Juliana.  For Juliana the problem of sin and evil comes from lack of knowledge, what she calls “unknowing.”   Julian writes about the feminine as well as the masculine attributes of God.  God as father has power and goodness and God as mother has wisdom and love, drawn from the courtly culture of the high middle ages.  The greatest obstacle to faith is not the “knowing” of God’s power but the “knowing” of God’s love.  If we are to use the gateway to God within our being, we need to be lovers as well as doers in order to grow closer 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: GOD'S PROVIDENCE

11/14/2014

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God’s Providence
 
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.”  “Be stout-hearted and wait for the Lord.  Woe to them who are faint-hearted, who believe not in God for they shall not be protected.” (Eccl 2)   If you wish to know the perfect abandonment to Divine Providence?  Look to Mount Calvary and the blessed limbs of our Lord nailed upon the cross!  That is where it led him whose food it was to do the will of his heavenly Father.”
 
 
Commentary by Father 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, that God provide  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 are 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 Father Hecker writes addresses.  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 occurs when our will and God’s will are aligned.  Hecker writes 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 to let go and trust that God will lead us through the difficult moments when we say, “Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” 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 deepen both our faith and our prayer life. 
 
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: LOVE AND THE SPIRITUAL LIFE

11/4/2014

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Servant of God Isaac Thomas Hecker wrote:
 
Man is a dependent being and cannot live by himself alone.  Without loving something the soul would not exist.  To say that we renounce all consolations and pleasures is to pretend the impossible.  When the saints, for example St. John of the Cross, speaks of the necessity of refusing all consolations and pleasures, he means that we must replace the love of creatures with the love of the Creator; the sensual pleasures of the passions for the spiritual consolations of Jesus Christ our Divine Spouse. 
 
The laws of spiritual life are like the laws of anything else; no one is expected to give up the greater for the less.  For unless the superior part of the soul experiences greater ardor for spiritual things than the movements of its passions, the soul will not overcome the pleasure of which sensual things are the occasion.  This is St. John of the Cross, and he says again: “It is necessary that the soul should be embraced with a holy love of her Divine Spouse, so that in placing all her pleasure in her Spouse she may receive the strength and constancy to reject the love of all other objects.  (Ascent of Mount Carmel, 50.1 chap 14 p. 105) 
 
 
A Response by Rev. Paul Robichaud CSP:
 
Servant of God Isaac Hecker writes about love and the spiritual life.   The first is fundamental to all humanity which is personal relationships.   As social beings we live in a network of relationships.  We need and often become dependent on each other.  Infants need to he held and nurtured and seniors as they grow older rely on others to assist them.  Some adults think they can separate and become completely independent.  As Father Hecker says this is impossible.  We can attempt to live totally separate lives but only to a point.   We are constructed to need other persons in our lives.  As Father Hecker writes, we cannot live for ourselves alone.   Personhood is a part of our spiritual lives as well; for the most important relationship is with the person of God; a relationship we call faith.  Father Hecker writes, “Without loving something the soul would not exist.”  Just as the Trinity is a community of persons, so as Catholic Christians, our faith is communal.  Our relationship with the persons of God serves to bind us together with each other; making us the people of God.
 
               The second is an understanding of prayer that is developed in the writings of Saint Theresa of Avila and her disciple, Saint John of the Cross.  Called a “Mystical Union;” it is the highest degree of mystical life possible in a relationship with God.  It is the seventh room in Saint Theresa’s classic work on mystical prayer, The Interior Castle; and it is understood that the saint reached this stage of union with God in the last years of her life.  There are three stages of prayer that comprise the journey to a mystical union.  The first is the prayer of union where the soul is deeply aware of God’s presence.  The second is the prayer of ecstatic union where the mystical union between God and the soul grows so that the body falls into ecstasy.  The famous Bernini statue of Saint Theresa in Ecstasy depicts this stage.    Finally in the prayer of transforming union, the soul gives itself to God completely and the soul is completely transformed by God’s love and shares in God’s life as fully as is possible in this life.   In a general audience in March 1982, Blessed John Paul II referred to the mystical union as an appropriate prayer form for celibate clergy and religious to practice in support of their vows.  Just as Father Hecker understands relationships as fundamental to the human person, so as a follower of Saint Theresa of Avila, he understood the highest possible relationship to be with God in a mystical union. 
 
 
Father Paul Robichaud CSP, is the 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 REFLECTIONS: HOPE

10/29/2014

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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.

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TRUE WISDOM AND HUMILITY

10/20/2014

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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.
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HECKER REFLECTION: PURPOSE IN LIFE

10/11/2014

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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.
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HECKER REFLECTION: TRUST IN GOD

10/2/2014

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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.

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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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