That this union is a personal relation, and that it should be a distinctly conscious one on the soul's part, all will admit who think but a moment of the infinite, loving activity of the Spirit of God, and the natural and supernatural receptivity of the spirit of man. Although not even the smallest germ of the supernatural life is found in nature, yet the soul of man ceaselessly, if blindly, yearns after its possession. Once possessed, the life of God blends into our own, mingles with it and is one with it, impregnating it as magnetism does the iron of the lodestone, till the divine qualities, without suppressing nature, entirely possess it, and assert for it and over it the Divine individuality. "Now I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." An author much admired by Father Hecker thus describes the effects produced in the soul by supernatural faith, and hope, and love:
"These virtues are called and in reality are Divine virtues. They are called thus not because they are related to God in general, but because they unite us in a divine manner with God, have Him for their immediate motive, and can be produced in us only by a communication of the Divine nature. . . . For the life that the children of God lead here upon earth must be of the same kind as the life that awaits them in heaven." (Scheeben's Glories of Divine Grace, p. 222; Benziger Bros.)
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. Then are fulfilled the Apostle's words: "But we all beholding the glory of the Lord with open face are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord" (2 Cor. 3:18).
Here are some of Father Hecker's words, printed but a year or two before his death, which treat not only of the interior life in general, but in particular of its relation to the outer action of God on the soul through the divine organism of the Church:
"St. Thomas Aquinas attributes the absence of spiritual joy mainly to neglect of consciousness of the inner life. 'During this life,' he says (Opuscula de Beatitudine, cap. iii.), 'we should continually rejoice in God, as something perfectly fitting, in all our actions and for all our actions, in all our gifts and for all our gifts. It is, as Isaias declares, that we may particularly enjoy him that the Son of God has been given to us. What blindness and what gross stupidity for many who are always seeking God, always sighing for Him, frequently desiring Him, daily knocking and clamoring at the door for God by prayer, while they themselves are all the time, as the apostle says, temples of the living God, and God truly dwelling within them; while all the time their souls are the abiding-place of God, wherein He continually reposes! Who but a fool would look for something out of doors which he knows he has within? What is the good of anything which is always to be sought and never found, and who can be strengthened with food ever craved but never tasted? Thus passes away the life of many a good man, always searching and never finding God, and it is for this reason that his actions are imperfect.'
"A man with such a doctrine must cultivate mainly the interior life. His answer to the question, What is the relation between the inner and the outer action of God upon my soul? is that God uses the outer for the sake of the inner life.
"There seems to be little danger nowadays of our losing sight of the Divine authority and the Divine action in the government of the Church, and in the aids of religion conveyed through the external order of the sacraments. Yet it is only after fully appreciating the life of God within us that we learn to prize fittingly the action of God in His external Providence. Such is the plain teaching of St. Thomas in the extract above given.
"By fully assimilating this doctrine one comes to aim steadily at securing a more and more direct communion with God. Thus he does not seek merely for an external life in an external society, or become totally absorbed in external observances; but he seeks the invisible God through the visible Church, for she is the body of Christ the Son of God.
"Once a man's hand is safe on the altar his eye and voice are lifted to God.
"It is not to keep up a strained outlook for times and moments of the interior visitations, but to wait calmly for the actual movements of the Divine Spirit; to rely mainly upon it and not solely upon what leads to it, or communicates it, or guarantees its genuine presence by necessary external tests and symbols.