Life of Father Hecker Part 38

"Three days ago a letter from Father Hewit reached me urging my immediate return in such strong language and with such considerations that I wrote a reply expressing my readiness to return at once. On re-reading the letter I found its tone so urgent that I sent a telegram to the above effect. . . . In G.o.d's hands are my being, my soul, and all my faculties, to do with them and direct them as He pleases. To return to the United States and there arrange things to His pleasure, or to leave me here. I am indifferent, quiet, entirely ready either not to act or to act."

And so in October, 1875, Father Hecker was again in New York. He begged the Fathers to allow him to stay with his brother for the present, "for my nerves could not stand the noise, the routine, and the excitement of the house in Fifty-ninth Street." And when he did return to the convent to live, which was four years afterwards, he was quite sure that his end was at hand, though it did not come till nine years later.

During all the thirteen years between Father Hecker's return to America and his death, his daily order of life was pretty much the same as he described it in one of his letters from Europe, already given to the reader. He did not resort any longer to change of place or climate as a means of recovery; he had tried that long enough. His physician, the one who served the community, a.s.sisted him constantly with advice and remedies, and once or twice he tried a sanitarium; he was apt to try anything suggested, being credulous about such matters. But his strength of body slowly faded away. He was more disturbed than surprised at this, and fought for life every inch of the way.

"If I were a Celt," he once said with a smile, "I should more readily resign myself to die, but I am of a race that clings fast to the earth." His persistent struggle was sometimes calm, but was generally sharpened by a horrible dread of death, which fastened on his soul like a vampire, and gave a stern aspect to his self-defence. His patience in suffering was most admirable, though seldom clothed in the usual formalities. "Perhaps, after all," he would sometimes say, "G.o.d will give me back my health, for I have a work to do."

Though anything but an ill-tempered man, Father Hecker was yet by nature ardent and irascible and quickly provoked by opposition, but G.o.d 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. Occasionally he lost his temper for a little while, and this was when compelled to attend to business under stress of great bodily or mental pain. We do not think that he was ever known to attempt to move men by anger, or even sternness. "If you ever tell any one about me," he said, "say that I believed in praising men more than in condemning them, and that I valued praise as a higher form of influence than any kind of threatening or compulsion." Nor did he resort to the formalities of obedience to secure his end. "Why don't you put me under obedience to do this?" asked a father who did not exactly approve of a proposal Father Hecker had made to him. The answer was given with a good deal of heat: "I have never done such a thing in my life, and I am not going to begin now!" Nor had he any use for bitter speech even in cold blood. "One thing," he said in a letter, "I will now correct; a sneer--intentionally or consciously-- is a thing that, so far as my memory serves, I am as innocent of as a little babe." Yet he could be sarcastic, as the following memorandum shows: "Cardinal Cullen once said to me, after I had made a journey through Ireland, 'Well, Father Hecker, what do you think of Ireland?'

I answered: 'Your Eminence, my thoughts about Ireland are such that I will get out of the country as soon as I can; for if I expressed my sentiments I should soon be put into jail for Fenianism!'" This was in 1867 while Fenianism was rampant. Of course he did not approve of it, but the sights he saw taught him its awful provocation. And once when unduly pressed with the dictum of an author whose range of power was not high enough to overcome Father Hecker's objections, he said: "I am not content to live to be the echo of dead men's thoughts." But it was not by skill in the thrust and parry of argumentative fence that Father Hecker won his way in a discussion, but by the hard drive of a great principle. The following memorandum describes the effect of this on an ordinary man:

"It is rather amusing when Father Hecker asks me some of his stunning questions on the deepest topics of the divine sciences. I look blank at him, I ask him to explain, I fish up some stale commonplace from the memory of my studies--and he then gives me his own original, his luminous answer."

And both his choice of subjects in conversation and his natural manner were according to his temperament, which was meditative. This gave his countenance when at rest a peaceful cast until within a few years of the end, when "death's pale flag" cast upon it a shade of foreboding. We have a photograph of him taken when he was about forty-five and in average good health, showing a tranquil face, full of thought and with eyes cast down; to the writer's mind it is the typical Isaac Hecker. But this expression changed in conversation, when not only his words but his gestures and his glances challenged a friendly but energetic conflict of opinion.

If it be asked, how did Father Hecker recreate himself during those mournful years, the answer is that recreation in the sense of a pleasurable relaxation seemed contrary to his nature whether in sickness or in health. It was once said to him, "Easter week is always a lazy time." "No, it is not," he answered. "I never have known a time, not a moment, in my whole life, when I felt lazy or was in an idle mood." He found himself obliged, however, to get out of the house and take exercise, walking in the park leaning on the arm of one of the community, or, if he was more than usually weak, being driven in his brother's carriage. There were occasions when to kill time was for him to kill care--to call his mind away from thoughts of death and of the judgment, the dread of which fell upon him like eternal doom. Then he would try to get some one to talk to, or to go with him and look at pictures and statues; or he would work at mending old clocks, a pretty well mended collection of which he kept in his room against such occasions. In the park he would often go and look at the beasts in the menagerie, and he spoke of them affectionately. "They bring to my mind the power and beauty of G.o.d,"

he said. He came to meals with the community, at least to dinner, until five or six years before his death, when his appet.i.te became so unreliable that he took what food he could, and when he could, in his room. He also attended the community recreations after meals until a few years before the end; but it was often noticed that the process of humiliation he was undergoing caused him to creep away into a corner, sit awhile with a very dejected look, and then wearily go upstairs to his room. When he was urged not to do this, "I cannot help it to save my life," was all the answer he could give. He finally gave up the recreations almost entirely.

But he hated laziness. "I am so weak," he once said, "and my brain is so easily tired out that I am forced to read a great deal to recreate myself. That's why you see me reading so much." The book in which he was at the moment seeking recreation was a ponderous work on metaphysics by a prolix Scotchman, treating in many dreary chapters of such amusing topics as the unity of the act of perception with the object perceived! As may be supposed of such a man, whose illness forbade action and whose interior trials made contemplation an agony, he chafed sometimes at his enforced inactivity, though he was never heard, as far as we can get evidence, openly to complain of it.

Time and stagnation of bodily forces did not alter his progressive ideas.

"Is it not wiser," he said, "to give one's thought and energy to prepare the way for the future success and triumph of religion than to labor to continue the present [state of things], which must be and is being supplanted? Such an att.i.tude may not be understood and may be misinterpreted, and be one of trial and suffering; still it is the only one which, consistently with a sense of duty, can be taken and maintained."

A bishop on his way to Rome once called on Father Hecker. "Tell the Holy Father," he said to him, "that there are three things which will greatly advance religion: First, to place the whole Church in a missionary att.i.tude--make the Propaganda the right arm of the Church.

Second, choose the cardinals from the Catholics of all nations, so that they shall be a senate representing all Christendom. Third, make full use of modern appliances and methods for transacting the business of the Holy See." Sometimes he discussed the activity of modern commerce as teaching religious men a lesson. He once said:

"When Father Hecker is dead one thing may be laid to his credit: that he always protested that it is a shame and an outrage that men of the world do more for money than religious men will do for the service of G.o.d."

No glutton ever devoured a feast more eagerly than Father Hecker read a sermon, a lecture, or an editorial showing the trend of non-Catholic thought. After his death his desk was found littered with innumerable clippings of the sort, many of them pencilled with underlinings and with notes. These furnished much of the matter of his conversation, and doubtless of his prayers. Once he wrote to a friend:

"n.o.body is necessary to G.o.d and to the accomplishment of his designs.

Yet at times I wish that I had the virtue that some creatures have; when cut into pieces each piece becomes a new complete individual of the same species. I should cut myself into at least a dozen pieces to meet the demands made upon me. What a splendid thing it is to think of our Lord going about doing wonders, eternal and infinite things, and all the time seeming to be unoccupied. The truly simple soul reduces all occupations to one, and in that one accomplishes all."

And his organizing faculty would busy itself in various schemes, which, if they could not cure his weak body, could relax with a fancied activity his tired soul. Thus in a letter he said:

"Why should we not form a league for the cause of our Lord, to whom we owe all? Unreserved devotion to His cause with patience, perseverance, humility, and sweetness, are weapons that no man or woman or thing can withstand. Our Lord has promised that if we believe in Him we shall do greater works than He did. Let us believe in Him, and clothe ourselves through faith in Him with His virtues, and who shall resist us?

"The first of all successes is Christ's triumph in our souls.

Everything that leads to this, humiliations, afflictions, calumnies, contempt, mortifications, all work for us a glory exceeding the imagination of man. To suffer for Christ's sake is the short-cut in the way of becoming Christ-like."

The following anecdote of his missionary days shows Father Hecker's contempt for lazy devotion. Once, when upon a mission, a young priest just returned home from Rome, where he had made his studies, expressed his desire to get back again to Italy as soon as possible, saying, "I find no time here to pray." Father Hecker felt indignant, for it did not seem to him that the young man was very much occupied.

"Don't be such a baby," said he. "Look around and see how much work there is to be done here. Is it not better to make some return to G.o.d--here in your own country--for what He has done for you, rather than to be sucking your thumbs abroad? What kind of piety do you call that?"

He took a personal interest in all the members of the community, and this was greatly heightened if any one fell sick. We remember his excitement when it was announced that one of the Fathers, who had been sent to a hospital for a surgical operation, had grown worse and was in danger of death. He began to pace his room, to question sharply about doctors and nurses, and immediately ordered Ma.s.ses to be said and special prayers by the community; and this father he had seen very little of and hardly knew from the others. "I cannot tell,"

he wrote to a friend at the time of Father Tillotson's illness, "I dare not express, how much I love him, what he is to me." Always tender-hearted, the nearer he came to the end and the more he suffered the more gentle were his feelings towards all, the more kindly grew his looks, but also the more sad and weary. He was always careful to express thanks for favors, small or great. The following is from a letter to a friend:

"Your last note contained at the end a kind invitation. Don't be troubled; I'm not coming! Do you know that sometimes I am tempted to think that I am necessary? Sometimes the thought has come to me that I might run away from home a week or so. Then I have driven the thought away as I would a temptation. But I wished to thank you none the less for your invitation, though I should never see you again. _I have an uncontrollable horror of ingrat.i.tude."_

During his long years of illness Father Hecker's reading continued upon the lines he had ever followed, the Scriptures holding, of course, the first place. Besides reading or having read to him certain parts adapted to the spiritual probation he was undergoing, such as Job, the Pa.s.sion of our Lord, and chapters of the sapiential books, he also took the entire Scriptures in course, going slowly through them from cover to cover and insisting on every word being read, genealogies and all. He would sometimes interrupt the reader to make comments and ask questions. The last words that he listened to at night were the words of Scripture, read to him after he had got into bed. He declared that they soothed him and settled his mind and calmed its disturbance, and this was easily seen by his looks and manner. Some who knew him well thought from his comments that G.o.d gave him infused knowledge of a rare order about the sense of Scripture. Once he said:

"When you were reading Ezechiel last night, oh, you cannot understand what thoughts I had! During the past six months I have learned how to understand him. I say within myself: 'O Ezechiel! Ezechiel! no one understands, no one understands you in this world, except one here and there.'"

Next to Scripture came St. Thomas and St. John of the Cross, the one for dogmatic and philosophical, the other for devotional uses. It must have been soon after returning to America as a Redemptorist that he procured a copy of Alagona's Compendium of St. Thomas, submitted it to Bishop Neumann, whose learning was in high repute, and obtained his a.s.surance of its accuracy. That little book is a curiosity of underlining and various other forms of emphasizing. It was with him till death. From it he referred to the full works of St. Thomas for complete statements, but he loved to ponder the brief summary of the abridgment and work the principles out in his own way. St. John of the Cross and Lallemant, as already stated, were his hand-books of mysticism and ascetic principles. The former he caused to be read to him in regular course over and over again, enjoying every syllable with fresh relish. In later days the _Life of Mary Ward,_ by Mary Catherine Chambers, and _The Glories of Divine Grace,_ by Scheeben, afforded him special pleasure. Books which told of the religious tendencies of minds outside the Church were sure to interest him. He studied them as Columbus inspected the drifting weeds and the wild birds encountered on his voyage of discovery. Those who served him as readers sometimes found this kind of literature pretty dry, just as Columbus's crew doubtless found it idle work to fish up the floating weeds of the sea. The following sentences occur in a diary written while in Europe in 1875. It is a statement of his opinion of the objective points at which Catholic teachers and writers of our day should aim:

"In dogmatic theology, when treating of the doctrine of the fall of man keep in view the value of human nature and the necessity of divine grace preceding every act of Christian life.

"In moral theology, stimulate the sense of personal responsibility.

"In ascetic theology, fidelity to the Holy Spirit.

"In polemic theology, develop the intrinsic notes of the Church."

As to novels, he fully appreciated their power over minds, but we believe that he did not read half a dozen in his whole life, and these he treated as he did graver works: he studied them. "To read is one thing, to study is another," says Cardinal Manning; but all reading was study to Father Hecker. We remember one novel which he read, slowly and most carefully, underlining much of it and filling the margins of every page with notes. "Why don't you read novels, as other people do?" he was asked. "Because life is more novel than any fiction, for fiction is but an attempt to paint life," he answered.

No printed matter of any kind, much less a book, ever could be a plaything to Isaac Hecker. He often made more of the sentences on a sc.r.a.p of newspaper, and studied them far harder, than the writer of them himself had done. A man whose play and work are in such problems as, how G.o.d is known, how the Trinity subsists, what beat.i.tude is, how G.o.d's being is mirrored in man's activity, has too real a life within him and about him to tarry long in fiction or in any of the by-roads of literature. Poetry, however, in its higher forms, or with a strong ethical tendency, he was very fond of. Perhaps his favorite among the poets was Coventry Patmore.

After returning to New York Father Hecker, besides supervising the editorial work of _The Catholic World,_ wrote an occasional article for its pages. The more important of these, twelve in number, with the Exposition as a leader, were published in a volume already mentioned, _The Church and the Age._ This book appeared in 1887, and contains his views of the religious problems in Europe and America, and also some controversial writings against orthodox Protestantism and Unitarianism. These are well-written, clean-cut, and aggressive pieces of polemical writing, whether against the errors of Protestants or of infidels. _The Church and the Age_ is the best exhibit of the author's opinions and principles on topics of religious interest and those of race and epoch having a religious bearing. He has left a considerable amount of unpublished matter, notably some essays on how G.o.d is known, the reality of ideas, and the Trinity, together with much on spiritual subjects. Let us hope that these and more of his unpublished writings will some day be given to the public. He always found difficulty in preparing matter for the press. Using a pencil and a rubber eraser, he often positively wore the paper through with writing, correcting, and writing again. He seemed scrupulous about such matters, and in these circ.u.mstances he lacked the immediate expression of his thoughts which came to him so spontaneously in his letters and diaries, as well as in his public speaking. But he dictated readily, and with a result of reaching quickly the form of words he would finally be content with. By this means he prepared his articles on Doctor Brownson, which appeared in _The Catholic World_ between April and November, 1887.

His intercourse with the members of the community was naturally much interfered with by his illness. But he loved to listen to them speaking of their work, was greatly interested in the building and decorating of the new church, and when the missionaries came home was eager to hear them tell of their success. He would invariably suggest that we should study how to extend our preaching outside the regular missions, so as to take in non-Catholics. He was also alive to opportunities for stimulating others, in and out of the community, to do literary work. At Lake George, where he spent his summers with the community, he was able to have a familiar contact with us all, especially the students, whom he enlisted in working about the grounds or the house, helping as best he could. But after his illness began he ever showed a certain constraint of manner when the conversation took a grave turn, a kind of shyness, which a judge of character might interpret as meaning, "I am afraid you'll misunderstand me; I am afraid you'll think I am a visionary."

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CHAPTER x.x.xV

CONCLUSION

FATHER HECKER'S prayer during all these years was a state of what seemed almost uninterrupted contemplation of varied intensity. He attended the evening meditation of the community as long as he had strength to do so, frequently giving a commentary on the points read out at the beginning, simple, direct, and fervent. He was exceedingly fond of a.s.sisting at High Ma.s.s on Sundays and feast days, and he had a small oratory built between the house and the new church, from which, by pa.s.sing a few steps from his room, he could hear the music and see the function through a window opening into the sanctuary.

This often overpowered him with emotion, which was sometimes so strong as to drive him back to his room and into bed. Once a week and on the more solemn festivals was as often as he could say Ma.s.s, or even hear it, on account of his extreme weakness in the mornings. For the last three or four years of his life to say Ma.s.s at all became a struggle which was as curious as it was distressing to witness. Those who had often read of such things in the lives of the servants of G.o.d were nevertheless amazed at the sight of them in Father Hecker. The following is from a memorandum:

_"Father Hecker:_ Do you know what it is to be in spontaneous relations with G.o.d--where the Divine Object works upon the soul spontaneously? It is that which prevents me from saying Ma.s.s, because I make a fool of myself. At any point I am apt to be so influenced by G.o.d as to be utterly deprived of physical force, to sink down helpless. At my brother's house they expect it and get me a chair. A few moments on a chair, and I am ready to go on. Now, if I yield to this I know that I shall be thrown into a clean helpless state, and I have a practical work to do. _Question:_ Does this effect come at receiving Communion? _Answer:_ I don't know, as I have never yet received Communion out of Ma.s.s. But I am afraid of it. Any such thing is apt to throw me off, and I am afraid. _Question:_ But suppose it to be G.o.d's will that you should say Ma.s.s notwithstanding this difficulty? _Answer:_ Then let Him bring it about."

At one time several months pa.s.sed, months of very low vitality in body and awful darkness of soul, during which he neither said Ma.s.s nor received Communion. The following memorandum describes how this period, perhaps the most painful of his life, was ended:

"Christmas, 1885.--For the first time since early summer Father Hecker undertook to say Ma.s.s: I a.s.sisted him, and a stormy time we had of it. It was at five in the morning and in the oratory. He wanted to have the door locked, but there was no key. 'Don't speak a word to me,' he said while he was dressing in his room. Arrived in the oratory, he sank down upon a bench as if some one had struck him; he threw his birettum down on the floor, and began to weep and cry in a very mournful way and aloud. But he quickly recovered, and rested as if he were preparing to be hanged. I supported him over to the altar, and as he began the _Judica_ he blubbered out the words like a school-boy being whipped. Most of the Ma.s.s he said out loud, hardly holding in his sobs anywhere except from the _hanc igitur_ till near the _Pater Noster._ His calmest time was during that most solemn part, and at his Communion. Three or four times he was forced to sit down on a chair I had provided for him on the predella. At the _Memento_ for the living he was deeply affected and patted the floor with his foot, sobbing aloud and acting like a child with an unendurable toothache. He was afraid of the _Pater Noster_ and asked me to say it with him, which I did; also various words and sentences in other parts of the Ma.s.s. I have heard him say that the _Pater Noster_ is a prayer which breaks him down. After he was through he insisted on trying to say the Pope's prayers. We said the Hail Marys and the Hail, Holy Queen, together, and I recited the prayer for him.

I had to take off his vestments the best I could while he sat, and when I got him down to his room and into bed, he was in a state of nearly complete unconsciousness. After saying my three Ma.s.ses, I saw him again at about 8.30, found him up and dressed and very bright, and he has been particularly so all day."

What follows is from a letter dated early in 1886, and seems to refer to the occasion above described. He speaks of himself in the third person:

"And he [Father Hecker] was never so occupied as now, although he is doing nothing and has been in that condition for months. Though he does hear Ma.s.s, he does not, because he cannot, say it--without showing what a _big fool_ he is. However he has begun again to say it. If it had not been for human respect he would not have said it last Sunday; he was too feeble. G.o.d is killing him by slow fire, by inches. He dies terribly hard."

If Father Hecker had had an unimpaired physical system when his interior trials came, he might have resisted the nervous depression which they caused, at least well enough to maintain an active part in his undertakings. Or if his bodily weakness, resulting from his early austerities, had been accompanied with interior equanimity, he might have held up. A rickety ship can, with care and skill, get into port if the engine is sound, and so can a sound ship with a broken-down engine sail home, however slowly. But with both a rickety ship and a disabled engine the port should be near at hand or there is danger of shipwreck. That Father Hecker did not die long before he did, was due, apart from G.o.d's special designs, to the extraordinary skill and care of Doctor James Begen, who was also an attached friend. Mr.

Anthony Ellis, one of his former penitents, served him in his sick-room out of pure love from 1879 until his death, which preceded Father Hecker's by about a year. He had a kind-hearted successor in Mr. Patrick McCann.

Father Hecker's beloved brother George died on February 14, 1888. He had been ailing for some time and Father Hecker went to see him frequently. . . . "George and I," he once said, "were united in a way no words can describe. Our union was something extremely spiritual and divine." The following memorandum tells how Father Hecker received the news:

"George Hecker died about nine o'clock last night, and when I informed Father Hecker of it this morning he was deeply moved. 'Don't say a word to me!' he cried, 'not a word. Read something! Read something quick!' I stepped over to the table and took the Scriptures and began to read the thirteenth chapter of St. John, read it through, and another chapter. By that time he calmed down. He only wept twice, except a few little sobs, and went out riding as usual this afternoon. He is profoundly moved. 'I knew it,' he said this morning; 'I saw it, I saw it last night--it seemed to me that I saw it. I came near coming to your room at half-past ten, but concluded not to do so.' Another time to-day he said: 'If G.o.d enables me to bear this I hope I shall be able to do my allotted work.'"