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As to Father Hecker's latter days in this world, it may be said that his joy and courage and buoyancy of spirits, as well as his hopeful outlook upon men and things, were all tried in the furnace of extreme bodily suffering as well as of the most excruciating mental agony.
One thing that becomes evident in studying this period of Isaac Hecker's life is the fact that his acquaintance with Dr. Brownson marks a turning-point in his views, his opinions, his whole attitude of mind toward our Lord Jesus Christ.
To be absorbed in such labors as above described was not the primary object of Father Hecker's vocation, but he accepted his place joyfully as chosen by the evident will of God. The missionary life was never in his eyes what the reader might surmise it to be a mere interlude in his career, a period of patient waiting. Such is far from having been the case.
We give the following extracts from letters of spiritual advice, to show Father Hecker's views of mortification: "Exterior mortifications are aids to interior life. What we take from the body we give to the spirit. If we will look at it closely, two-thirds of our time is taken up with what we shall eat, and how we shall sleep, and wherewithal we shall be clothed.
Incivism will Catholic apologists never learn it? is the heaviest stone flung at the Church in all free lands to-day. Father Hecker's blood fairly boiled that the Church of Christ, the very home of Christian freedom, and the nursing-mother of all civil well-being, should be thus assailed, while Calvin's and Luther's degrading doctrines should be paraded as alone worthy of a free people.
O beatified nothingness which can exclaim, Deus meus et omnia!" It will have been seen by this time that Father Hecker's first and fundamental rule of direction was to have as little of it as possible. His method started out with the purpose to do away with method at the earliest moment it could safely be done.
Brownson's heavy heart was due to philosophical difficulties, and Isaac Hecker's to the same; but in addition the latter had a mystical experience to which Brownson was at that time, certainly, a stranger, and, as far as we know, he remained so; and these mystical difficulties demanded settlement far more imperatively than did the philosophical ones.
The following extract from the Roman statement summarizes what we have been telling in this chapter, and introduces the reader to Father Hecker's first missionary activity as a writer: "My superiors sent me back to the United States, and on my return being asked by my immediate superior in what way he could best employ me, my reply was, in taking care of the sick, the poor, and the prisoners.
I feel, indeed, quite indifferent about the decision which may be given, so that they allow us freedom." As illustrating Father Hecker's supernatural motives and rectitude of conscience the following extracts from letters to the Fathers will be of interest. God has been exceedingly good not to let me be even tempted in this way."
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.
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