Life of Father Hecker

by Walter Elliott

Lallemant's answer to the difficulty of excess of personal liberty in this method has been already given. Father Hecker's own is as follows:

"The enlargement of the [interior] field of action for the soul, without a true knowledge of the end and scope of the external authority of the Church, would only open the door to delusions, errors, and heresies of every description, and would be in effect only another form of Protestantism. But, on the other hand, the exclusive view of the external authority of the Church, without a proper understanding of the nature and work of the Holy Spirit in the soul, would render the practice of religion formal, obedience servile, and the Church sterile.

"The solution of the difficulty is as follows: The action of the Holy Spirit embodied visibly in the authority of the Church, and the action of the Holy Spirit dwelling invisibly in the soul form one inseparable synthesis; and he who has not a clear conception of this two-fold action of the Holy Spirit is in danger of running into one or the other, and sometimes into both, of these extremes, either of which is destructive of the end of the Church. The Holy Spirit, in the external authority of the Church, acts as the infallible interpreter and criterion of divine revelation. The Holy Spirit in the soul acts as the divine Life-giver and Sanctifier. It is of the highest importance that these two distinct offices of the Holy Spirit should not be confounded.

"The increased action of the Holy Spirit, with a more vigorous co-operation on the part of the faithful, which is in process of realization, will elevate the human personality to an intensity of force and grandeur productive of a new era to the Church and to society—an era difficult for the imagination to grasp, and still more difficult to describe in words, unless we have recourse to the prophetic language of the inspired Scriptures."

"The way out of our present difficulties," said Father Hecker, speaking of the conflicts of religion in Europe, "is to revert to a spirituality which is freer than that which Providence assigned as the counteraction of Protestantism in the sixteenth century—to a spirituality which is, and ever has been, the normal one of the Christian inner life. That era accentuated obedience, this accentuates no particular moral virtue, but rather presses the soul back upon Faith and Hope and Love as the springs of life, and makes the distinctive virtue fidelity to the guidance of the Holy Spirit, impelling the Christian to that one of the moral virtues which is most suitable to his nature and to the requirements of his state of life, and other environments."

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. We have seen how he sought advice, and was aided by it at every crisis of his life. But he did not accept all that is said by some writers about the surrender of the soul to one's father confessor. He thought that confession was often too closely allied with direction, and he was convinced that many souls could profit by less introspection in search of sin, and more in search of natural and supernatural movements to virtue. He condemned over-direction, and thought that there was a good deal of it. He thought that there were cases in which spontaneity of effort was too high a price to pay for even the merit of obedience. His sentiment is well expressed by St. John of the Cross in the ninth chapter of The Ascent of Mount Carmel:

"Spiritual directors are not the chief workers, but rather the Holy Ghost; they are mere instruments, only to guide souls by the rule of faith and the law of God according to the spirit which God gives to each. Their object, therefore, should be not to guide souls by a way of their own, suitable to themselves; but to ascertain, if they can, the way which God Himself is guiding them."

Leave much to God's secret ways, was one of Father Hecker's principles. "When hearing some confessions on the missions," he once said, "and when about to give absolution, I used to say, in my heart, to the penitent, Well, no doubt God means to save you, you poor fellow, or He wouldn't give you the grace to make this mission. But just how He will do it, considering your bad habits, I can't see; but that's none of my business."

Leave much to natural or acquired inclinations, was one of his maxims. He was not deeply interested in souls who by temperament or training needed very minute guidance in the spiritual life; to him they seemed so overloaded with harness as to have no great strength left for pulling the chariot. But he would not interfere with them; he knew that it was of little avail to try to change such methods once they had become habitual; and he recognized that there were many who could never get along without them. At any rate he was tolerant by nature, and slow to condemn in general or particular anything useful to well-meaning souls.

"It is vain to rise before the light," was another motto. "Make no haste in the time of clouds." These two texts of Scripture he was fond of repeating. "When God shows the way," he once said, "you will see; no amount of peering in the dark will bring the sun over the hills. Pray for light, but don't move an inch before you get it. When it comes, go ahead with all your might." Self-imposed penances, self-assumed devotional practices he mistrusted. He was convinced that the only way sure to succeed, and to succeed perfectly, was either that shown by an interior attraction too powerful and too peaceful to be other than divine, or one pointed out by the lawful external authority in the Church.