Hecker

“ Father Hecker was so plainly a great man of that type, so evidently an outgrowth of our institutions, that he stamped American on every Catholic argument he proposed. Nor was the force of this peculiar impression lessened by the whispered grumblings of a few petty minds among Catholics themselves, to whom this apostolic trait was cause for suspicion. Never was a man more Catholic than Father Hecker, simply, calmly, joyfully, entirely Catholic. What better proof of this than the rage into which his lectures and writings threw the outright enemies of the Church? ”

“ In the Press civilized Man lives and breathes. Father Hecker was as alive to the injury done to humanity by bad reading as a skilful physician is to the malaria which he can smell and fairly taste in an infected atmosphere; and he ever strove to make the Press a means of enlightenment and virtue. He began to write for publication almost immediately after his arrival in America as a Redemptorist missionary; the Questions of the Soul and the Aspirations of Nature were composed amidst most absorbing occupations between 1853 and 1858. ”

“ Isaac Hecker was a born teacher of men, and to be shut off from them by an isolated experience was to be robbed of his vocation. A soul like his, led to the truth along the path of social reform, will hail with delight a religion which organizes all humanity on a basis of equality, and at the same time verifies and explains the facts of each one's particular experience. ”

“ On the other side, a repeated and careful examination of Father Hecker's letters and memoranda reveals no accusation by him of moral fault against his Redemptorist superiors, but on the contrary many words of favorable explanation of their conduct. When the Rector Major, in the midst of his council, began, to Father Hecker's utter amazement, to read the sentence of expulsion, he fell on his knees and received the blow with bowed head as a visitation of God. ”

“ An occasional call was received from an old friend, lay or cleric, and this was not apt to be repeated, so painful was the contrast between the former Father Hecker and the present one. Instead of the active and powerful man, of contagious courage and hopefulness, they saw a tall, wan old man bending with the weight of years and of suffering, but still majestic in his look and bearing, with a white beard, and soft, attractive eyes. ”

“ We give what follows as characteristic of Father Hecker's manner as a director:
"At first, in all your deliberate actions, calm your mind, place yourself in the attitude of a receiver or listener, and then decide. Imperceptibly and insensibly grace will guide you."
"Don't care what people say; keep your own counsel. Use your own sense and abound in it; as the apostle says: 'Let every one abound in his own sense.' Don't try to get anybody to agree with you. No two noses are alike, much less souls. God never repeats." ”

“ Teresa, October 15, 1846, therefore, the two American novices took their vows, and became members of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer. On the very morning of that event, at half-past eight, Brother Hecker wrote a letter to his mother, in which he goes over all of his trials and experiences in following the Divine guidance since he first quitted business. He breathes intense affection in every word, and writes in a solemn mood. ”

“ HECKER, FRIEDRICH FRANZ KARL (1811–1881) , German revolutionist, was born at Eichtersheim in the Palatinate on the 28th of September 1811, his father being a revenue official. He studied law with the intention of becoming an advocate, but soon became absorbed in politics. On entering the Second Chamber of Baden in 1842, he at once began to take part in the opposition against the government, which assumed a more and more openly Radical character, and in the course of which his talents as an agitator and his personal charm won him wide popularity and influence. ”

“ Fathers Hecker, Hewit, and Walworth, led by Father Bernard, made a unique band of missionaries, one, we think, hardly equalled since they yielded their place to others. Each was a man of marked individuality, whose distinct personality was by no means obscured by the strict conformity to rule evident in their behavior. Fathers Hewit and Walworth were orators, differing much from each other, both full of power. Father Hecker was a born persuader of men, and could teach as a gift of nature, earnest in mind and manner. ”

“ Though anything but an ill-tempered man, Father Hecker was yet by nature ardent and irascible and quickly provoked by opposition, but God gave him such a horror of dissension that he would not quarrel, though it was often plain that his peaceful words cost him a hard struggle. ”

“ On a line with his principles, as I have so far delineated them, Father Hecker believed that if he would succeed in his work for souls, he should use in it all the natural energy that God had given him, and he acted up to his belief I once heard a good old priest, who said his beads well and made a desert around his pulpit by miserable preaching, criticise Father Hecker, who, he imagined, put too much reliance in man, and not enough in God. ”

“ Every missionary will bear witness, as Father Hecker often did, that he has never assisted at a mission in which he was not profoundly impressed by the tears of hardened sinners. Every parish priest, however much he may regret the backsliding of some, will testify to the valuable results of missions among his people: the quickening of faith and the revival of supernatural motives, drunkards reformed, restitutions made, lust cleansed away, families united, the church thronged with worshippers, saloons deserted. ”

“ Theoretically and practically, Isaac Hecker loved humanity; to make men happy was his ever-renewed endeavor; was, in truth, the condition on which his own happiness depended. For years this view of his life-task alternated with his search for exact answers to the questions his soul asked about man's destiny hereafter ”

“ It must have taken more than ordinary penetration to perceive anything but a kind of grandiose folly in Brother Hecker. The impulse to talk about the conversion of America, to plan it and advocate it, to proclaim it possible and prove it so, and to philosophize on the profoundest questions of the human reason, was irrepressible. ”

“ The quiescence of a body of men, sincere and intelligent, infallibly certain of the means of obtaining eternal happiness, living in daily contact with other men ignorant and inquiring about this unspeakable privilege, and yet not taking instant measures to impart their knowledge, was to Father Hecker almost as great a wonder as the divine gift of faith itself, especially as Catholics are well furnished with leaders and are organized to spread the truth as one of their most sacred duties. ”

“ But from what has been said it must not be inferred that Father Hecker thought it safe to be without spiritual counsel, above all when the soul seemed led in extraordinary ways. He firmly believed in the necessity of direction, and that in the sense intended by spiritual writers generally. In practice he himself always consulted men of experience and piety. ”

“ To secure this union and render it more and more conscious was Father Hecker's ceaseless endeavor through life, both for himself and for those who fell under his influence, whether in cleansing the soul of all hindrances of sin and imperfection, or advancing it deeper and deeper into the divine life by prayer and the sacraments.
His doctrine of Christian perfection might be formulated as a profession of faith: I believe in God the Father Almighty; I believe in Jesus Christ the Only Begotten Son of the Father ”

“ To partake thus of the inner life of God was Father Hecker's one spiritual ambition, and to help others to it his one motive for dealing with men. He was ever insisting upon the closeness of the divine union, and that it is our life brought into actual touch with God, whose supreme and essential activity must, by a law of its own existence, make itself felt, dominate as far as permitted the entire activity of the soul, and win more and more upon its life till all is won. ”

“ Few men since the Apostles have felt a quicker pulse than Isaac Hecker when the name of God was heard, or that of Jesus Christ or the Holy Spirit. Few men have had a nobler pride in the Church of Christ, or felt more one with her honor. Few men have grown into closer kinship with all the family of God, from Mary the great mother and the holy angels down to the simplest Catholic, than Isaac Hecker. But his peculiar trait was fidelity to the inner voice. ”

“ Such was the common austerity of the life that it took some ingenuity to inflict on a novice a mortification which had not grown stale by use in the case of one or more of the others. But in searching the interior of the soul the director could find tender places into which his weapon would be plunged to the bone. But it is more than probable that he misunderstood Brother Hecker, and that for a time he even suspected him of being under delusions. For several months, at any rate, he treated him at his weekly confession with the utmost rigor, producing indescribable mental agony. ”

“ Let us each ask ourselves in whose business we are employed. Is it our Father's, or is it not? If not, let us immediately turn to the business of our Father, the only object of our life. Let us submit wholly to the guidance of Love."
"TO MRS. CATHERINE J. HECKER. Concord, May 31, 1844.—You speak of my situation as pleasant, and so it is to me. Though the house is situated on the street of a village, the street is beautifully arched with trees for some distance, and my room is very pleasant. ”

“ Always there is the reaching out of a strong nature toward what it lacks—a material for its strength to work on, a craving for rational joy, coupled with an ever-increasing conviction that nature cannot give him such a boon. Men who knew Father Hecker only in his royal maturity, sometimes cavilled at his words of emphatic faith in guileless nature; but they had only to know him a little better to learn his appreciation of the supernatural order, and his recognition of its absolute and exclusive competency to satisfy nature's highest aspirations. ”

“ It was written in the diary in the midst of his preparations for his baptism, and is an early witness of a permanent characteristic of Father Hecker's life. It is, besides, a fitting introduction to the description of his state of mind when he entered the Church, showing better than anything we have found what kind of man became a Catholic in Isaac Hecker.
"Man is a mystic fact. ”

“ Now, Isaac Hecker was built for a missionary, and the extreme view of the primary value of highly-wrought discipline which he encountered everywhere among Catholics, though not enough to blind him to the essential liberty of the Church, was enough to delay him in his progress to her. There can be little doubt that multitudes of men and women of less discernment and feebler will than his, have been and still are kept entirely out of the Church by the same cause. ”

“ Though the Hecker brothers were, and ever continued to be, men of the highest business integrity, and though there existed between them a cordial affection, which was intensified to an extraordinary degree in the case of George and Isaac, yet the unfitness of the latter for ordinary trade grew increasingly evident, and to himself painfully so. ”

“ Every time he looked at the Church he was greeted with the spectacle of unity and uniformity, of discipline and order. These are elements which always have been, and probably always will be, most attractive to the classes called educated, to men seeking for external notes of truth, flying from disorder, fearful of rebellion. But to Isaac Hecker, the only external note which deeply attracted him was that of universal brotherhood. If he were to bow his knee with joy to Jesus Christ, it would be because all, in heaven and earth or hell, should one day bend in union with him. ”

“ It is plain that what Isaac Hecker is here condemning is the life of the world, wholly ordinary in its aims and motives. It is not to be understood as a condemnation of the common lot of men, or of that life in itself. ”

“ But the very fact that the ordinary gates to learning were so soon closed against these children caused the natural tendency they had toward knowledge to impel them all the more strongly in that shorter road to practical wisdom which leads through labor and experience. The Hecker brothers were all hard at work while still mere children, and before John, the eldest, had attained to legal manhood, they had fixed the solid foundations of an enduring prosperity, and all need of further exertion on the part of their parents was over for ever. ”

“ Isaac Thomas Hecker lives to-day, and with added years he will live more fully than he does to-day. His influence for good remains, and with a better understanding of his plans and ideals, which is sure to come, his influence will widen and deepen among laymen and priests of the Church in America. The writing of his biography is a tribute to his memory which the love and esteem of his spiritual children could not refuse; it is, also, a most important service to generations present and unborn, in whose deeds will be seen the fruits of inspirations gathered from it. ”

“ On those of our readers whose acquaintance with Father Hecker dates, as our own does, from his intensely active and laborious prime, these revelations of the period when he was being passively wrought upon and shaped for his work by the hand of God, may produce an effect not unlike that we have been conscious of in studying the greater mass from which our extracts are taken. They will, perhaps, be struck, in the first place, by the unexpectedly strong witness they bear to the wholly interior and mystical experience of the man. ”