Life of Father Hecker Part 21

Alphonsus and St. Clement were, at the time when the three Americans joined them, the most powerful preachers in the Church. Their vocation called them to give missions--spiritual exercises lasting from a week to a month--to the faithful in every part of Catholic Europe, not excepting France. Their fame was established as the foremost preachers of penance and of the Redeemer's love for sinners.

St. Trond was the novitiate of the Belgian Province, which embraced Belgium and Holland as well as the newly established convents in England and America. The Provincial was Father de Held, whom we saw in Baltimore while he was there on a tour of inspection of the American houses. He was an Austrian German, a man of n.o.ble presence, matured spirituality and an accomplished missionary. Father Hecker knew him well in after years, and always counted him as one who understood his spirit and approved his aspirations.

The convent in St. Trond was in a narrow street of the quaint little city; so narrow, indeed, that one almost fancied that he could touch both walls by stretching out his arms. It was a solid old structure, built in the first half of the fifteenth century by St. Colette for her Poor Clares, an ample guarantee of its conformity to the ideas of religious poverty. It was not architecturally fine, but was a curious and interesting building. Isaac in one of his letters home says that the house was very roomy, with long corridors having cells on each side. It ab.u.t.ted on a church which was open to the public and served by the fathers; a window in the convent chapel looked into the sanctuary. Attached to the house was a garden of three or four acres.

The country around the town is a typical Flemish landscape, flat, fertile, thickly dotted with farm buildings, and highly cultivated.

The people are wholly Catholic. The town is an old one, and in its time has had some military importance. Our young novices often walked upon the ramparts which encircled it. In the neighborhood are structures which were built before the Christian era; quite near by was one of Caesar's round towers, as well as the deserted ruins of an ancient city named Leo. Curious old churches and monasteries might often be seen by the novices on their long walks into the country.

All this antiquity was the more pleasing to the American novices because in their own land the forests, the rivers, and the everlasting hills are all that represent the distant past.

Besides twenty novices there were ten or twelve fathers at St. Trond, who either served the church or went about on missions; and there were also a number of lay brothers. By nationality the greater portion of the novices were Belgians and Hollanders, the others being mostly Germans. The language of the house was French, though Latin was sometimes used. Of course this was an added difficulty to Brother Hecker, as he was now called, for he knew practically nothing of that language, though he had studied it a little. But he attacked it resolutely and, as one of his companions said, learned it heels over head. He never feared to make mistakes, nor dreaded a smile at his expense, and as a consequence was soon able to talk to any one. But his French was always curious, and when he took his turn at reading during meals he gave the community some hearty laughs.

All the new-comers were invested with the Redemptorist habit about three weeks after their arrival, in September, 1845. "You can scarce imagine the happiness I felt on my arrival here," he writes to his mother in his first letter home. "For three days my heart was filled with joy and gladness. I was like one who had been transported to a lovelier, a purer, and a better world." He tells her that he had waited for a fortnight before writing, to learn the place, and then, after expressing his satisfaction with everything in such sentences as the above, he fills the rest of the letter with arguments in favor of the Catholic Church and exhortations to join it. Such was the burden of all of his letters home from both St. Trond and Wittem. We have ten written from the novitiate. An exception must be made as to one which describes in detail the daily order of life in the novitiate. It is addressed to his mother.

He tells her that the first bell rings at half-past four in the morning and the last at half-past nine at night. The time is divided between various common and private devotional exercises, including Ma.s.s, meditations, recitation of the office in common, study of the rule of the order, spiritual conferences, spiritual reading, and the like. Silence is broken only for an hour after dinner and another hour after supper. About an hour of out-door exercise is taken every day, and a long walk once a week and on feast-days. All of Thursday in each week and the more important feasts of the year are days of recreation, when silence need not be observed during the greater part of the day, and much relaxation is otherwise allowed. All Fridays are days of total silence and special devotion. The letter fails to mention the discipline, or flagellation, which was taken twice a week.

He ends thus: "The time of the novitiate is one year, and its object is to prove our vocation, and form the religious character--the heart. The exercises may seem too many to you, but to us they are quite otherwise. Their frequent changes prevent them from being monotonous, and their variety makes them agreeable. Our time pa.s.ses without our taking count of it, and our joy is that of a pure conscience, and our happiness that of a clean heart."

It might seem a matter of peculiar difficulty for a free nature like Isaac Hecker's to conform to the stiff rules of such a system. But this was not the case, and a closer look into the matter shows that such a regimen is of much use to an earnest man, however free his character, at the outset of his spiritual career. Experience proves that one test of the genuineness of the interior disposition to serve G.o.d perfectly is readiness to surrender exterior peculiarities. There is nothing in the special graces of G.o.d which should hinder a placid acceptance of the routine of a novitiate. The merging of individual conduct into the common custom is the contribution which community life must exact from every member. If a man is to be a hermit he may act from individual impulses alone, though, even so, rarely without counsel. But if one would live and work with others, special graces and individual traits of character must not be allowed to interfere with a certain degree of uniformity. On the other hand, that uniformity should not be allowed to cripple the spontaneous action of natural independence, and the inspiration of graces which are personal.

It must be granted that with many souls a novitiate will tend to a routine use of religious aids. Yet it cannot be denied that its discipline forcibly concentrates the scattered purposes of life into one powerful stream. It contributes to symmetry of character. It furnishes efficacious tests of sincerity. It drills disorderly natures into regularity. It acquaints the beginner with the literature of his holy profession, and herein it is of priceless worth. And finally, it provides advisers of approved wisdom during the period of the spiritual life when counsel is most needed, as well as most gratefully accepted. But if it fails in each of these particulars, as no doubt it sometimes does, the novitiate may be said never to fail in detecting an inapt.i.tude for the common life, if such exists; that is to say, a serious lack of the qualities which fit one to get along in peace with the brethren.

Into the novitiates of the religious orders, and into the seminaries which hold their place for the secular priesthood, the n.o.blest men of our race have entered joyfully; some to be wedded to the Divine Spouse in the quiet seclusion of holy contemplation, and others, of the more militant orders, to be trained to follow worthily the standards of the apostolic warfare against vice and error.

The novice-master was puzzled by his three Americans, though Brother McMaster was easily comprehended--an over-frank temperament, impulsive, and demonstrative. Not only were his banners always hanging on the outward wall, but his plan of campaign also. The other two were a study, and Brother Hecker was a curiosity. Yet both were cheerful, obedient, earnest, courageous. The novice-master was annoyed at the Americans' incessant demand for the reason why of all things permitted, and the reason why not of all things prohibited; until at last Brother Walworth was named Brother Pourquoi. As to Brother Hecker, besides showing the same stand-and-deliver propensity, he occupied much of the time of conversation in philosophizing, plunging into the obscurest depths of metaphysical and ethical problems, using terms which were often quite unfamiliar to strictly orthodox ears, and exhibiting a fearless independence of thought generally conceded among Catholics only to practised theologians. Yet the novice-master was well pleased with both, though we shall see that his journey with Brother Hecker was for some time in the dark.

When the Fourth of July came around he learned that it was the great American holiday, and he called the three Americans to him and asked, "How do you celebrate your national holiday at home?" "By shooting off fire-crackers," they answered with a twinkle. This being out of the question, and the grand military parade which was next suggested also impracticable, Brothers Walworth and Hecker both exclaimed, "Ginger-bread!" "Take all you want," was the answer, "and go off on a long walk, and spend the day by yourselves." And of they went to wander among the ruins of the outposts of the old Roman republic, and make Fourth of July speeches in honor of the great new Republic beyond the sea. Those who have been novices themselves will not be surprised at the boyishness of these three manly characters under the circ.u.mstances.

Isaac Hecker's spirit was not anywise cramped by the routine exercises of the novitiate; he made them easily and well. He always seemed to his companions what he actually was, and what he described himself to be in his letters to New York, a cheerful and contented novice. But, as one of them since expressed it, he was not a "dude"

novice, not the very pink of external perfection, and had a long period of interior trial. He did not exhibit at any time the least hesitancy about his vocation, for his mind was made up. Yet once, when he took a walk with Brother Walworth to visit a house of Recollects, Franciscans of the strict observance, both he and his companion were greatly struck by that charming poverty which the poor man of a.s.sisi has bequeathed to his children; they did ask each other whether they had not made a mistake. This question, however, was but the expression of a shadowy doubt, vanishing as suddenly as it had come.

The novice-master was Father Othmann, and he was by universal testimony entirely competent for his place. He was himself the novitiate. Its austerities, and they were not trifling, its long and frequent prayer, its total seclusion from the world, all were refined and adjusted to each one by pa.s.sing through his soul and being dispensed by his wisdom. Father Hecker regarded him as a very remarkable man. He was a student of character, and wise and sagacious in varying the application of religious influences according to temperament and spiritual gifts. Under him the danger of formalism, which occurs to one's mind immediately as the incessant round of exercises is mentioned, was rendered remote; for he gave his instructions, and especially used the chapter of faults, in a way to infuse into the souls of the novices the ever-recurring freshness of individual initiative. His model (after St. Alphonsus) was St.

Francis de Sales. He followed him constantly in his doctrine and methods, and often spoke of him and quoted him. Of other methods and their advocates he spoke respectfully, but, however much they were in vogue, he did not follow them. Brother Hecker was a faithful student in his school and learned much from Father Othmann. The latter especially insisted on the principle of accepting Providence as the chief dispenser of mortifications. He had no objection to self-imposed spiritual exercises, but he did not positively favor them. He taught his young men that the traditional practices of devout souls as embraced in the routine of the novitiate, were good mainly to break the resistance of corrupt nature and render their souls pliant subjects of the Divine guidance in the interior life, as well as submissive to the order of G.o.d in the events of His external Providence.

The a.s.sistant novice-master, who took Father Othmann's place during his absence, was a Walloon. His name we have been unable to discover, but he was a holy priest, held up to the novices as their model and esteemed by them as the saint of the novitiate. He was a very pleasant man withal, and no doubt added in every way to the fruits of the long year of spiritual trial.

When Isaac Hecker presented himself as a novice he took his place among the youths learning the A, B, C of the spiritual life, while he himself had experienced for many months the most rare dealings of the Holy Ghost with the soul. This could not fail to come to the knowledge of Father Othmann, and, taken with the other peculiarities of his subject, to elicit his most skilful treatment. "Pere Othmann, my novice-master," said Father Hecker, in after years, "had a right to be puzzled by me, and so he watched me more than he did the others." He watched and studied him and gradually applied the two sovereign tests of genuine spirituality, obedience and humiliation.

These were all the more efficacious in this case, because Brother Hecker was a man of great native independence of character and naturally of an extremely sensitive disposition.

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. Many years afterwards, and when near his death, Father Hecker once said to the writer: "While I was kneeling among the novices, outside Pere Othmann's room, waiting to go to confession, I often begged of G.o.d that it might be His will that I should die before my turn came, so dreadful an ordeal had confession become on account of the severity of the novice-master."

Yet, as recorded in the memoranda, the victim was eager for the sacrifice when the knife was not actually lifted over him. "I begged the novice-master," he said on another occasion, "to watch me carefully, and when he saw me bent on anything to thwart me. I did not know any other way of overcoming my nature. He took me at my word, too. For example, once a week only we had a walk, a good long one, and we enjoyed it, and it was necessary for us. I enjoyed it very much indeed. So, sometimes when we were starting out, my thoughts bounding with the antic.i.p.ated pleasure, he would stop me midway on the stairs: 'Frere Hecker,' he would say, 'please remain at home, and instead of the walk wash and clean the stair-way.' It would nearly kill me to obey, such was my disappointment, grief, humiliation."

In conjunction with these trials from without came a recurrence of resistless interior impulses. "During my novitiate," he is recorded as saying in 1885, "I found myself under impulses of grace which it seemed to me impossible to resist. One was to conquer the tendency to sleep. I slept on boards or on the floor. After a while I was able to do with five hours sleep, and often with only three, in the twenty-four. Pere Othmann was not unwilling for me to follow these impulses as soon as he became convinced of their imperative strength.

Yet I now see that such practices were in a certain sense mistaken.

They necessarily consumed in mortification vitality that I could now use, if I had it, in a more useful way. Still, how could I help it?"

The end of this period of his humiliations, which was not far from the end of his noviceship, is thus described: "One day after Communion I was making my half-hour thanksgiving in my room, when Pere Othmann came in and examined me about my form of prayer. Oh! it was just then that I had reached the pa.s.sive state of prayer: _I_ did nothing, _Another_ did everything in my prayer. From that time, having put me down in the gutter, the novice-master raised me up to the pinnacle, whereas I should have been in neither place." On another occasion he told how the change of prayer had happened: "I was on my knees one day after Communion, making a regular thanksgiving, when suddenly G.o.d stopped me, and I was told not to pray that way any more. Question: How were you told--what words were spoken to you? Answer: Cease your activity. I have no need of your words when I possess your will. 'Tis I, not you, who should act. My action in you is more important than your thanks. I cease to act when you begin, and begin to act when you cease. Be still--tranquil-- listen--suffer me to act. Abandon yourself to me, and I will take care of you."

When in Rome, in the winter of 1857-8, he was compelled by circ.u.mstances, which will be told in their place, to make a written summary of his spiritual experience. In it he says: "My novitiate was one of sore trials, for the master of novices seemed not to understand me, and the manifestation of my interior to him was a source of the greatest pain. After about nine or ten months he appeared to recognize the hand of G.o.d in my direction in a special manner, conceived a great esteem (for me), and placed unusual confidence in me, and allowed me without asking it, though greatly desired, daily Communion. During my whole novitiate no amount of austerity could appease my desire for mortification, and several gifts in the way of prayer were bestowed on me."

On March 6, 1886, while in a state of almost utter physical prostration, he communicated to the writer the following: "Forty years ago, in my novitiate, G.o.d told me that I was to suffer in every fibre of my being." "Perhaps," was remarked, "you have not suffered all yet." Answer: "Perhaps not, but G.o.d has kept His promise in every limb, member, and function of my body." It may become necessary to refer again to these interior experiences. We leave them with the remark that his novitiate was characterized by a continuance of Divine interferences similar to those which had occurred at intervals from the time he was driven from home and business to seek the fulfilment of his aspirations.

The following is the record of a brave soul's failure to become a Redemptorist. It is given in a letter dated September 14, 1846: "Brother McMaster, who returns to the U.S., gives me the opportunity of writing a few lines to you," etc. It was a profound disappointment for Mr. McMaster to be obliged to return home a layman, and it shocked his companions. It is a little singular that Father Othmann told him that his vocation was not to be a religious, but an editor.

He carried with him Brother Hecker's messages of affection to his friends and relatives, and rosaries of Isaac's own making for his mother and his brother George.

Writing to the latter, on August 26, 1846, after some tender and affectionate words, he says: "I have now nearly eight weeks until the time of taking the vows. Oh that it were but eight minutes, nay, eight seconds, when I shall be permitted, with the favor and grace of G.o.d, to consecrate my whole being and life to His sole service!

Millions of worlds put on top of one another could not purchase from me my vocation. We make fifteen days' retreat before we take the vows. You must recommend me very particularly to the Rt. Rev. Bishop McCloskey; tell him the time of my taking the vows (Feast of St.

Teresa, October 15), and give him my humble request to remember me at that time in his prayers."

On the feast of St. 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. We would give the letter to the reader entire, but that he has already learned what it narrates. It ends thus: "Dear mother, in half an hour I go to the chapel to consecrate my whole being for ever to G.o.d and His service. What peace, what happiness this gives me! To live alone for His love, and to love all for His love, in His love, and with His love!"

After the ceremony was over he wrote as follows to his brother John:

"DEAR BROTHER JOHN: This day, with the special grace of G.o.d, I have taken the holy vows of the Catholic religion, which are obedience, poverty, chast.i.ty, and final perseverance. These vows bind me to the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer for my natural life, and the Congregation in the same manner to me. Thanks to G.o.d for His kind Providence. My vocation is once for all, for ever settled, firmly fixed. During the year and more of my novitiate I have not had any temptation against my vocation, nor any desire on my part to return to the world.

"As you were not certain whether I would return after the novitiate or not, I suppose you left my name in connection with yours and brother George's in the firm. But now that this (separation) is certain, would it not be best for you to destroy that agreement we made with each other some time ago, that no future difficulty can or may arise? All this I leave to your judgments; and as for me, dear brothers John and George, in respect to the business, you may regard me as though I had never been connected with it, nor had any t.i.tle or claim upon it whatever. I am simply your dear brother Isaac, who loves you from the depth of his heart. This love, be a.s.sured, will never be diminished by any event; whatever happens will only give me new motives to love you the more. My conduct is under your inspection, yours especially, dear John, as being the eldest of us three, and I trust your sincere love for me will not let any word or action of mine pa.s.s unnoticed which may be the least unpleasant to you.

"My love, my grat.i.tude, and my prayers to and for you all. Remember me to all my friends.

"Your brother, ISAAC.

"St. Trond, October 15, 1846.

"I have forgotten to say that if you have not already made use of the things that I left, such as clothing, you should do so."

In bidding adieu to the novitiate we think Father Hecker's last meeting with his old novice-master, as we find it recorded in the memoranda, will be of interest: "Pere Othmann was one of my best friends. Shortly before he died I happened to be in France (this was after leaving the Redemptorists), and I heard that he was extremely ill at the Redemptorist house at Nancy.

I wrote to him that if he wished I would call and see him. He answered me at once, begging me to come immediately, as he desired above all things to see me before he died. So I made a journey to Nancy, and we had some hours of pleasant conference together, and I bade him farewell."

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CHAPTER XXII

HOW BROTHER HECKER MADE HIS STUDIES AND WAS ORDAINED PRIEST

THE day after the taking of the vows, Brothers Hecker and Walworth started by stage-coach for the house of studies, at Wittem in Dutch Limburg. The route lay nearly east through a country pleasant on account of the fertility of its soil and the industry of its inhabitants, and interesting from its churches, monasteries, and curious old villages. The travellers crossed the Meuse at Maestricht and reached their destination before nightfall. Wittem is a small town, thirty miles east of St. Trond and about ten west of Aix-la-chapelle. This part of Holland is entirely Catholic, and its people possess a fervor which has sent missionaries to the ends of the earth. Everywhere shrines were to be seen by the roadsides. The country is not so level as that west of the Meuse, and the Redemptorist students often made excursions among the hills, our young Americans admiring the shepherds guarding their flocks, with their crooks and their dogs.

The house of studies was an old Capuchin monastery, large and plain and very interesting. The friars had buried their dead under the ground floor, which enabled the students to dig up an abundant supply of skulls as _memento moris_ till the rector forbade it. The students were more numerous at Wittem than the novices had been at St. Trond.

They were mostly Dutchmen, with a sprinkling of Belgians and a few Germans; but the language of the house was French or Latin. We have not been able to make quite sure of the name of the Rector; possibly it was Father Heilig, who certainly was there at this time, either in charge of the house or as one of the professors. The Master of Studies was Father L'hoir, who soon became one of Brother Hecker's dearest friends.

The two Americans found their fellow-students men of fine character and every way lovable, being earnest and devoted religious. They admired their thorough proficiency in all cla.s.sical and literary studies, the result of old-world method and application. Mentally and physically they were splendid men. The whole race of Flemings and Dutch was found by our young recruits to be a grave and powerful people, although exceptional cases of mercurial temperament were not rare. Some curious individuals were to be found among them, as is more the case in European nationalities in general than in our own.

Both Americans were much liked and respected by all their new-found brethren, though Brother Hecker, for reasons soon to be told, was sometimes ridiculed in a way that distressed him. Brother Walworth, having studied much before entering the order, was placed at once in the theological department and Brother Hecker in the philosophical.

The former was even dispensed from one year of his theology, taking but two years of the three which formed the full course. The difference of studies separated the two companions almost wholly from each other, members of the two departments not being allowed even to speak together except on extraordinary occasions.

All went smoothly with Brother Walworth. Not so with Brother Hecker, who was expected to make two years of philosophy and meantime to increase his stock of Latin. But his faculties had been subjected to spiritual experiences of so absorbing a nature that he found study impossible. And when Brother Walworth was in due course ordained priest, in August, 1848, his companion was stuck fast where he had begun. It need not be said that so earnest a soul made every effort to study, but all was in vain. In the statement made in Rome ten years later, and referred to before, we find the following:

"My wish was to make a thorough course (of studies) and begin with philosophy. This the superior granted. My intellect in all scientific (scholastic) matters seemed stupid, it was with great difficulty that its attention could be kept on them for a few moments, and my memory retained of these things nothing. At the close of the first year (at Wittem) all ability to pursue my studies had altogether departed.

This state of things perplexed my superiors, and on being asked what they could do with me, my answer was, 'One of three things: make me a lay brother; send me to a contemplative order which does not require scientific (scholastic) studies; or allow me to pursue, at my free moments, my studies by myself.' Instead of either of these they gave me charge of the sick, which was my sole (regular) occupation for the whole year following. During this year my stupidity augmented and reduced me to a state next to folly, and it was my delight to be treated as a fool. One day, when my fellow-students were treating me as such, and throwing earth at me, an ancient father, venerated for his gifts and virtues, suddenly turned around to them and with emotion exclaimed, 'You treat him as a fool and despise him; the day will come when you will think it an honor to kiss his hand.' At the expiration of the second year (at Wittem) the question came up again, what was to be done with me. My superior put this question to me, and demanded of me under obedience to tell him in writing how, in my belief, G.o.d intended to employ me in the future. Though the answer to this question was no secret to me, yet to express it while in a condition of such utter helplessness required me to make an act of great mortification. There was no escape, and my reply was as follows: It seemed to me in looking back at my career before becoming a Catholic that Divine Providence had led me, as it were by the hand, through the different ways of error and made me personally acquainted with the different cla.s.ses of persons and their wants, of which the people of the United States is composed, in order that after having made known to me the truth, He might employ me the better to point out to them the way to His Church. That, therefore, my vocation was to labor for the conversion of my non-Catholic fellow-countrymen.