IN THE SHADOW OF DEATH
"I LOOK back," wrote Father Hecker in the summer of 1879, "on these
three years as one continuous and dreadful interior struggle." This
shows that the shadows were too deep and broad for the intervals of
peace, which we know from his letters he had now and then enjoyed, to
banish the impression of constant gloom. And Father Hecker's
readiness to return home upon positive request will be the better
appreciated when we remember how very painful to him was the very
thought of his past occupations. Nor was his bodily health in a
hopeful condition. While at Ragatz in the month of June, 1875, he met
a distinguished physician from Paris, an excellent Catholic, whom
he had been strongly advised to consult before. Glad of the chance,
he submitted to a thorough examination, and received from him a
written statement to the effect that it would be dangerous to take up
any steady occupation, and that he should be entirely free from care
for at least a year; otherwise a final break-down was to be expected.
This seemed effectually to bar all thoughts of return. And such was
his own settled conviction, as is shown by the following, written
about the end of June:
"Where could I find repose? Not in the community; not at my
brother's: nowhere else to go. Then, again, I would be constantly
required to give opinions and counsel in the affairs of the
community, which would require an application beyond my strength.
There is no other way than for me to remain contented in Europe,
with my feebleness and obscurity, in the hands of God."
But on July 29 he received a letter which compelled him to decide
between tranquillity of spirit and bodily comfort--perhaps life
itself--on the one hand, and the call of his brethren on the other.
He decided without a moment's hesitation and with the utmost
equanimity. We quote from a letter to George Hecker:
"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 God'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, assisted 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,
"God 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
God 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 God,"
he said. He came to meals with the community, at least to dinner,
until five or six years before his death, when his appetite 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 attitude 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 attitude--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
God."
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:
"Nobody is necessary to God 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
God--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 Masses 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 ingratitude."_
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 Passion 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 God
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 assurance 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
scrap 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 God is known, how the Trinity subsists, what beatitude is,
how God'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 God 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
circumstances 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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