Life of Father Hecker

by Walter Elliott

From this it would seem that the case was finally settled by Father Heilig after Father de Held's departure for the Continent, which took place, as well as we can discover, some time in the summer of 1849. Father Heilig's letter, written from Liège, is before us; it is dated the 24th of March, 1849. It is a complete arraignment of Isaac Hecker's spiritual condition. It is gentle, considerate, choice of terms, but condenses all that could be said to show that his young friend had been deluded by a visionary temperament, applying to himself what he had read in mystical treatises and the lives of the saints. The letter was indeed a deadly blow. Father Heilig had been Brother Hecker's confessor for two years at Wittem, and had at least tacitly approved his spirit; and now came his condemnation. No wonder that Isaac was profoundly distressed by it. Yet his conviction of the validity of his inner life was not shaken for an instant. Nor was the trial of long duration. We have found a letter from Father Heilig dated two months later than the one we have been considering, and it is full of messages of reassurance and encouragement. The intervention of De Buggenoms completed the work. It is possible that Father Heilig had not simply a desire to test Brother Hecker's humility, but, by studying the effect of the trial imposed, to remove doubts still lingering in his own mind. Some words in both the letters referred to lead us to this inference.

Father L'hoir had not forgotten his young friend, who received a letter from him a couple of months after leaving Wittem, which breathes in every word the tenderest utterance of friendship; and a year after, another one similarly affectionate, congratulating him on his ordination. This Father L'hoir must have been a noble soul to write so lovingly; we wish that space permitted us to give his letters to the reader.

Amongst the papers left by Father Hecker we found one carefully preserved, bearing date at St. Mary's, Clapham, the feast of St. Raphael (Oct. 24) 1848, a month after his arrival there. It is a manuscript of thirty-nine closely-written pages of letter-paper. It is an account of conscience made, no doubt, to Father de Held, though its preparation may have occupied some of his time before leaving Wittem. We will make some extracts. It begins thus:

"Before commencing what is to follow, I cannot resist making the confession of my feebleness and incapacity to express even conveniently those things which I feel it my duty to relate, that I may walk with greater security and quicker step in the way of God. It would not surprise me if one who has not taken the pains to investigate this matter sufficiently should doubt indeed whether such singular graces, seeing the faults I daily commit and my many imperfections, had really been given to such an individual. A similar remark to this was made by my last director. But this is a cause of much joy and consolation to me; (that is to say) that my interior life is hid and unknown to others except those who direct me. All that I can adduce in behalf of its truth and credibility are these words of sacred Scripture: Spiritus ubi vult spirat (the Spirit breatheth where He will); and, ubi autem abundavit delictum, superabundavit gratia (but where sin abounded there did grace more abound.)

. . . . . . . .

"At that time (towards the end of the novitiate) I felt a special attraction and devotion toward Our Blessed Lord in the Holy Sacrament and an almost irresistible desire of receiving the blessed Communion of Divine love. This desire so far from having abated has greatly increased, so that I have a constant hunger and thirst for Our Lord in the sacrament of His body and blood. If it were possible I would desire to receive no other food than this, for it is the only nourishment that I have a real appetite for. I cannot consider it other than the source and substance of my whole spiritual and interior life. The day on which I have been deprived of it I have experienced a debility and want of both material and spiritual life like one who is nearly famished. The doctrine of the real presence of our Lord seems to be with me a matter of conviction arising more from actual experience than from faith. At times, when I would make my visit, I am seized with such a violent love towards the Blessed Sacrament that I am forced to break off immediately, being unable to support the attraction of the Spouse, the Beloved, the Only One of my soul. For some time back, wherever I may be, or on whatever side I turn, I seem to feel the presence of Our Lord in the Sacrament in the tabernacle. It seems as though I were in the same sphere as our Lord in the sacrament, where there appears no time nor space, yet both are.

. . . . . . . .

"At times, especially during the great retreat before making the vows, I was as it were inebriated with love, so that I scarcely knew what I said or did.

. . . . . . . .

"This was the stage of my interior life on entering the house of studies at Wittem, October, 1846. Here the principal acts in all my spiritual exercises were those of resignation and conformity to the will of God, an entire fidelity to the inspirations and attractions of the Holy Spirit, and a total abandonment of myself to the conduct of Divine Providence. God seemed always engaged in my soul by means of His grace in repressing my own activity. The end of my proper activity, I said to myself, is its destruction. God commands a total and entire abandonment of the soul to Him in order that He may with his grace destroy and annihilate all that He finds in it against His designs and will. God at times seemed to demand of me a frightful and heroic abandonment of my soul to His good pleasure. God alone knows how to exercise the soul in virtue, and the Holy Spirit is its only true master in the spiritual life. Not only did the spirit of God excite and elicit in me voluntary acts of self-abandonment, but often my soul was as if stripped of all support, and placed, as it were, over a dark and unfathomable abyss, and thus I was made to see that my only hope was to give myself up wholly to Him. The words of Job well express this purgation of the soul when he says: 'The arrows of the Lord are in me, the rage whereof drinketh up my spirit, and the terrors of the Lord war against me.' (Here follow other quotations from the book of Job.) Sometimes these pains penetrate into the remotest and most secret chambers of the soul. The faculties are in such an intensive purgation that from the excessive pain which this subtile and purifying fire causes they are suspended from their ordinary activity, and the soul, incapable of receiving any relief or escaping from its suffering, has nothing left but to resign itself to the will and good pleasure of God. Though enveloped with an unseen but no less real fire, suffering in every part, limb, and fibre from indescribable pains, fixed like one who should be forced to look the sun constantly in the face at midday, she is nevertheless content, for she has a secret consciousness that God is the cause of all her sufferings, and not only content—she would suffer still more for His love."