HAVING given in the preceding chapter Father Hecker's principles of the religious life in community, a more general view of his spiritual doctrine, as well as of his method of the direction of souls, naturally follows. And here we are embarrassed by the amount of matter to choose from; for as he was always talking about spiritual doctrine to whomsoever he could get to listen, so in his published writings, in his letters to intimate friends, and in his notes and memoranda, we have found enough falling under the heading of this
CHAPTER to fill a volume. Let us hope for its publication some day.
It need hardly be said that Father Hecker did not claim to have any new doctrine; there can be none, and he knew it well. Every generation since Christ has had His entire revelation. Development is the word which touches the outer margin of all possible adaptation of Christian principles to the changing conditions of humanity. But in the transmission of these principles from master to disciple, in practically assisting in their use by public instruction, or by private advice, or by choice of devotional and ascetical exercises, there is as great a variety of method as of temperament among races, and even among individuals; and there are broadly marked differences which are conterminous with providential eras of history. This was a truth which Father Hecker, in common with all discerning minds, took carefully into account.
His fundamental principle of Christian perfection may be termed a view of the Catholic doctrine of divine grace suited to the aspirations of our times. By divine grace the love of God is diffused in our hearts; the Holy Spirit takes up his abode there and makes us children of the Heavenly Father, and brethren of Jesus Christ the Divine Son. The state of grace is thus an immediate union of the soul with the Holy Trinity, its Creator, Mediator, and Sanctifier. To secure this union and render it more and more conscious was Father Hecker's ceaseless endeavor through life, both for himself and for those who fell under his influence, whether in cleansing the soul of all hindrances of sin and imperfection, or advancing it deeper and deeper into the divine life by prayer and the sacraments.
His doctrine of Christian perfection might be formulated as a profession of faith: I believe in God the Father Almighty; I believe in Jesus Christ the Only Begotten Son of the Father; I believe in the Holy Ghost the Life Giver, the spirit of adoption by whom I am enabled to say to the Father, My Father, and to the Son, My Brother.
He wished that men generally should be made aware of the immediate nature of this union of the soul with God, and that they should become more and more personally conscious of it. He would bring this about without the intervention of other persons or other methods than the divinely constituted ones accessible to all in the priesthood and sacraments. It was the development of the supernatural, heavenly, divine life of the regenerate man, born again of the Holy Ghost, that Father Hecker made the end of all he said and all he did in leading souls; and he maintained that to partake of this life which is "the light of men," many souls needed little interference on the part of others, and that in every case the utmost care should be taken lest the soul should mingle human influences, even the holiest, in undue proportion with those which were strictly divine.
"Go to God," he wrote to one asking advice, "go entirely to God, go integrally to God; behold, that is sincerity, complete, perfect sincerity. Do that, and make it a complete, continuous act, and you need no help from me or any creature. I wish to provoke you to do it. That is my whole aim and desire. Just in proportion as we harbor pride, vanity, self-love—in a word, self-hood—just so far we fail in integrally resigning ourselves to God. Were we wholly resigned to God He would change all in us that is in discord with Him, and prepare our souls for union with Him, making us one with Himself. God longs for our souls greatly more than our souls can long for Him. Such is God's thirst for love that He made all creatures to love Him, and to have no rest until they love Him supremely. If my words are not to your soul God's words and voice, pay no heed to them. If they are, hesitate not a moment to obey. If they humble you to the dust, what a blessing! He that is humbled shall be exalted."
"Peace is gained by a wise inaction, and strength by integral resignation to God, who will do all, and more than we, with the boldest imagination, can fancy or desire."
"May you see God in all, through all, and above all. May the Divine transcendence and the Divine immanence be the two poles of your life."
The natural faculties of the understanding and will, whose integrity Father Hecker so much valued, were to be established in a new life infinitely above their native reach, glorified with divine life, their activity directed to the knowledge of things not even dreamed of before, and endowed with a divine gift of loving. In this state the Holy Spirit communicates to the human faculties force to accomplish intellectual and moral feats which naturally can be accomplished by God alone. This is called by theologians supernatural infused virtue, and is rooted in Faith, Hope, and Love, is made efficacious by spiritual gifts of wisdom and understanding, and knowledge and counsel, and other gifts and forces, the conscious and daily possession of which the Christian is entitled to hope for and strive after, and finally to obtain and enjoy in this life.
That this union is a personal relation, and that it should be a distinctly conscious one on the soul's part, all will admit who think but a moment of the infinite, loving activity of the Spirit of God, and the natural and supernatural receptivity of the spirit of man. Although not even the smallest germ of the supernatural life is found in nature, yet the soul of man ceaselessly, if blindly, yearns after its possession. Once possessed, the life of God blends into our own, mingles with it and is one with it, impregnating it as magnetism does the iron of the lodestone, till the divine qualities, without suppressing nature, entirely possess it, and assert for it and over it the Divine individuality. "Now I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." An author much admired by Father Hecker thus describes the effects produced in the soul by supernatural faith, and hope, and love:
"These virtues are called and in reality are Divine virtues. They are called thus not because they are related to God in general, but because they unite us in a divine manner with God, have Him for their immediate motive, and can be produced in us only by a communication of the Divine nature. . . . For the life that the children of God lead here upon earth must be of the same kind as the life that awaits them in heaven." (Scheeben's Glories of Divine Grace, p. 222; Benziger Bros.)
To partake thus of the inner life of God was Father Hecker's one spiritual ambition, and to help others to it his one motive for dealing with men. He was ever insisting upon the closeness of the divine union, and that it is our life brought into actual touch with God, whose supreme and essential activity must, by a law of its own existence, make itself felt, dominate as far as permitted the entire activity of the soul, and win more and more upon its life till all is won. Then are fulfilled the Apostle's words: "But we all beholding the glory of the Lord with open face are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord" (2 Cor. 3:18).
Here are some of Father Hecker's words, printed but a year or two before his death, which treat not only of the interior life in general, but in particular of its relation to the outer action of God on the soul through the divine organism of the Church:
"St. Thomas Aquinas attributes the absence of spiritual joy mainly to neglect of consciousness of the inner life. 'During this life,' he says (Opuscula de Beatitudine, cap. iii.), 'we should continually rejoice in God, as something perfectly fitting, in all our actions and for all our actions, in all our gifts and for all our gifts. It is, as Isaias declares, that we may particularly enjoy him that the Son of God has been given to us. What blindness and what gross stupidity for many who are always seeking God, always sighing for Him, frequently desiring Him, daily knocking and clamoring at the door for God by prayer, while they themselves are all the time, as the apostle says, temples of the living God, and God truly dwelling within them; while all the time their souls are the abiding-place of God, wherein He continually reposes! Who but a fool would look for something out of doors which he knows he has within? What is the good of anything which is always to be sought and never found, and who can be strengthened with food ever craved but never tasted? Thus passes away the life of many a good man, always searching and never finding God, and it is for this reason that his actions are imperfect.'
"A man with such a doctrine must cultivate mainly the interior life. His answer to the question, What is the relation between the inner and the outer action of God upon my soul? is that God uses the outer for the sake of the inner life.
"There seems to be little danger nowadays of our losing sight of the Divine authority and the Divine action in the government of the Church, and in the aids of religion conveyed through the external order of the sacraments. Yet it is only after fully appreciating the life of God within us that we learn to prize fittingly the action of God in His external Providence. Such is the plain teaching of St. Thomas in the extract above given.
"By fully assimilating this doctrine one comes to aim steadily at securing a more and more direct communion with God. Thus he does not seek merely for an external life in an external society, or become totally absorbed in external observances; but he seeks the invisible God through the visible Church, for she is the body of Christ the Son of God.
"Once a man's hand is safe on the altar his eye and voice are lifted to God.
"It is not to keep up a strained outlook for times and moments of the interior visitations, but to wait calmly for the actual movements of the Divine Spirit; to rely mainly upon it and not solely upon what leads to it, or communicates it, or guarantees its genuine presence by necessary external tests and symbols.
"Not an anxious search, least of all a craving for extraordinary lights; but a constant readiness to perceive the Divine guidance in the secret ways of the soul, and then to act with decision and a noble and generous courage—this is true wisdom.
"The Holy Spirit is thus the inspiration of the inner life of the regenerate man, and in that life is his Superior and Director. That His guidance may become more and more immediate in an interior life, and the soul's obedience more and more instinctive, is the object of the whole external order of the Church, including the sacramental system.
"Says Father Lallemant (Spiritual Doctrine, 3d principle, chap. i. art. 1): 'All creatures that are in the world, the whole order of nature as well as that of grace, and all the leadings of Providence, have been so disposed as to remove from our souls whatever is contrary to God.'"
What follows has been culled from notes and memoranda:
"When authority and liberty are intelligently understood, when both aim at the same end, then the universal reign of God's authority in the Church will be near and the kingdom of God be established universally."
"The whole future of the human race depends on bringing the individual soul more completely and perfectly under the sway of the Holy Spirit."
"What society most needs to-day is the baptism of the Holy Spirit."
"That soul is perfect which is guided habitually by the instinct of the Holy Spirit."
"The aim of Christian perfection is the guidance of the soul by the indwelling Holy Spirit. This is attained, ordinarily, first by bringing whatever is inordinate in our animal propensities under the control of the dictates of reason by the practice of mortification and self-denial; for it is a self-evident principle that a rational being ought to be master of his animal appetites. And second, by bringing the dictates of reason under the control and inspiration of the Holy Spirit by recollection, and by fidelity and docility to its movements."
"To attain to the spiritual estate of the conscious guidance of the indwelling Holy Spirit, the practice of asceticism and of the natural and Christian moral virtues are the preparatory means.
"To rise before the light appears, is vain; to hinder the soul from rising when it does appear, is oppression. In the first place, the soul is exposed to delusions; in the second, it is subjected to arbitrary human authority. The former opens the door to all sorts of extravagances and heresies; the latter breeds a spirit of servility and bondage."
"To reach that stage of the spiritual life which is the consciousness of the indwelling and guidance of the Holy Spirit some souls need the practice of asceticism more than others, these latter being more advanced by the practice of the Christian virtues. Others, again, need the strenuous practice of both of these means of advancement until the close of their lives. And there is another class which reaches this degree of spiritual growth sooner and with less difficulty than the generality of souls."
"Whenever the guidance of the Holy Spirit is sufficiently recognized, then the practice of the virtues immediately related to this action and proper to increase it in the soul are to be recommended, such as recollection, purity of heart, docility and fidelity to the inner voice, and the like."
"It should ever be kept in view that the practice of the virtues is not only for their own sake and to obtain merit, but mainly in order to remove all obstacles in the way of the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and to assist the soul in following His operations with docility."
"Obedience in its spiritual aspect divests one of self-will and makes him prompt to submit to the will of God alone. Viewed as an act of justice, obedience is the payment of due service to one's superior, who holds his office by appointment of God."
"The essential mistake of the transcendentalists is the taking for their guide the instincts of the soul instead of the inspirations of the Holy Spirit. They are moved by the natural instincts of human beings instead of the instinct of the Holy Ghost. But true spiritual direction consists in discovering the obstacles in the way of the Divine guidance, in aiding and encouraging the penitent to remove them, and in teaching how the interior movements of the Holy Spirit may be recognized, as well as in stimulating the soul to fidelity and docility to His movements."
"The director is not to take the place of the Holy Ghost in the soul, but to assist His growth in the soul as its primary and supreme guide."
"The primary worker of the soul's sanctification is the Holy Spirit acting interiorly; the work of the director is secondary and subordinate. To overlook this fundamental truth in the spiritual life is a great mistake, whether it be on the part of the director or the one under direction."
The great obstacle to the prevalent use of this privilege of divine interior direction is lack of practical realization of its existence by good Christians. And this want of faith is met with almost as much among teachers as among learners, resulting in too great a mingling of the human element in the guidance of souls. What is known as over-direction is to be attributed, as Father Hecker was persuaded, to confessors leading souls by self-chosen ways, or laboriously working them along the road to perfection by artificial processes, souls whom the Holy Spirit has not made ready for more than the beginning of the spiritual life. This is like pressing wine out of unripe grapes. Another practice which Father Hecker often deprecated was the binding of free and generous souls with all sorts of obligations in the way of devotional exercises. This is forcing athletes to go on crutches. The excuse for it all is that it really does stagger human belief to accept as a literal matter of fact that God the Holy Ghost personally comes to us with divine grace and gives Himself to us; that He actually and essentially dwells in our souls by grace, and in an unspeakably intimate manner takes charge of our entire being, soul and body, and all our faculties and senses.
"By sanctifying grace," says St. Thomas (p. I, q. 33, art. 2), "the rational creature is thus perfected, that it may not only use with liberty the created good, but that it may also enjoy the uncreated good; and therefore the invisible sending of the Holy Ghost takes place in the gift of sanctifying grace and the Divine Person Himself is given to us."
It is the soul's higher self, thus in entire union with the Spirit of God, that Father Hecker spent his life in cultivating, both in his own interior and in that of others. He insisted that in the normal condition of things the mainspring of virtue, both natural and supernatural, should be for the regenerate man the instinctive obedience of the individual soul to the voice of the indwelling Holy Spirit.
To what an extent this inner divine guidance has been obscured by more external methods is witnessed by Monsignor Gaume, who places upon the title-page of his learned work on the Holy Spirit the motto "Ignoto Deo"—to the Unknown God!
Objections to this doctrine are made from the point of view of caution. There is danger of exaggeration, it is said; for if in its terms it is plainly Catholic, it may sound Protestant to some ears. And in fact to those whose glances have been ever turned outward for guidance it seems like the delusions of certain classes of Protestants about "change of heart" and "inner light."
"But," says Lallemant (and the reader will thank us for a detailed reply to this difficulty from so venerable an authority), "it is of faith that without the grace of an interior inspiration, in which the guidance of the Holy Spirit consists, we cannot do any good work. The Calvinists would determine everything by their inward spirit, subjecting thereto the Church herself and her decisions. . . . But the guidance which we receive from the Holy Ghost by means of His gifts presupposes the faith and authority of the Church, acknowledges them as its rule, admits nothing which is contrary to them, and aims only at perfecting the exercise of faith and the other virtues. The second objection is, that it seems as if this interior guidance of the Holy Spirit were destructive of the obedience due to superiors. We reply: 1. That as the interior inspiration of grace does not set aside the assent which we give to the articles of faith as they are externally proposed to us, but on the contrary gently disposes the mind to believe; in like manner the guidance which we receive from the gifts of the Holy Spirit, far from interfering with obedience, aids and facilitates the practice of it. 2. That all this interior guidance, and even [private] divine revelations, must always be subordinate to obedience; and in speaking of them this tacit condition is ever implied, that obedience enjoins nothing contrary thereto. . . .
"The third objection is that this interior direction of the Holy Spirit seems to render all deliberation and all counsel useless. For why ask advice of men when the Holy Spirit is Himself our director? We reply that the Holy Spirit teaches us to consult enlightened persons and to follow the advice of others, as He referred St. Paul to Ananias. The fourth objection is made by some who complain that they are not themselves thus led by the Holy Spirit, and that they know nothing of it. To them we reply: 1. That the lights and inspirations of the Holy Spirit, which are necessary in order to do good and avoid evil, are never wanting to them, particularly if they are in a state of grace. 2. That being altogether exterior as they are, and scarcely ever entering into themselves, examining their consciences only very superficially, and looking only to the outward man and the faults which are manifest in the eyes of the world, . . . it is no wonder that they have nothing of the guidance of the Holy Spirit, which is wholly interior. But, first, let them be faithful in following the light which is given them; it will go on always increasing. Secondly, let them clear away the sins and imperfections which, like so many clouds, hide the light from their eyes: they will see more distinctly every day. Thirdly, let them not suffer their exterior senses to rove at will, and be soiled by indulgence; God will then open to them their interior senses. Fourthly, let them never quit their own interior, if it be possible, or let them return as soon as may be; let them give attention to what passes therein, and they will observe the workings of the different spirits by which we are actuated. Fifthly, let them lay bare the whole ground of their heart to their superior or to their spiritual father. A soul which acts with this openness and simplicity can hardly fail of being favored with the direction of the Holy Spirit" (Spiritual Doctrine, 4th principle, ch. i. art. 3).
Father Hecker had himself suffered, and that in the earliest days of his religious life, from want of explicit instruction about this doctrine. Father Othmann, whom our readers remember as the novice-master at St. Trond, was too spiritual a man to have been ignorant of its principles. Yet he seemed to think that either no one would choose it in preference to the method in more common use, or that he would not find his novices ready for it. But to Father Hecker it was all-essential. "When I was not far from being through with my noviceship," he was heard to say, "I was one day looking over the books in the library and I came across Lallemant's Spiritual Doctrine. Getting leave to read it, I was overjoyed to find it a full statement of the principles by which I had been interiorly guided. I said to PÈre Othmann: 'Why did you not give me this book when I first came? It settles all my difficulties.' But he answered that it had never once occurred to his mind to do so." Besides the Scriptures, Lallemant, Surin, Scaramelli's Directorium Mysticum, the ascetical and mystical writings of the contemplatives, such as Rusbruck, Henry Suso (whose life he carried for years in his pocket, reading it daily), Tauler, Father Augustine Baker's Holy Wisdom (Sancta Sophia), Blosius, the works of St. Teresa, and those of St. John of the Cross—these and other such works formed the literature which aided Father Hecker in the understanding and enjoyment of the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Lallemant he returned to ever and again, and St. John of the Cross he never let go at all. It was always with him, always read with renewed joy, and its wonderful lessons of divine wisdom, expressed as they are with the scientific accuracy of a trained theologian and the unction of a saint, were to Father Hecker a pledge of security for his own state of soul and a source of inspiration in dealing with others.
To the ordinary observer a knowledge of the men and women of to-day does not give rise to much hope of the widespread use of this spirituality. But Father Hecker thought otherwise. He ever insisted that it must come into general preference among the leading minds of Christendom; for independence of character calls for such a spirituality, and that independence is by God's providence the characteristic trait of the best men and women of our times. God must mean to sanctify us in the way He has placed us in the natural order. He believed that the Holy Spirit would soon be poured out in an abundant dispensation of His heavenly gifts, and that such a renewal of men's souls was the only salvation of society. Some may think that he was over-sanguine; many will not interest themselves in such "high" matters at all. But some of the wisest men in the Church are of his mind, notably Cardinal Manning. And the signs of the times, if interrogated with regard to the problem of man's eternal destiny, give no other answer than the promise of a new era in which the Holy Ghost shall reign in men's souls and in their lives with a supremacy peculiar to this age.
The following extract from The Church and the Age, a compilation of Father Hecker's later essays, shows his estimate of the form of spirituality we have been discussing, as bearing upon the regeneration of society in general:
"The whole aim of the science of Christian perfection is to instruct men how to remove the hindrances in the way of the action of the Holy Spirit, and how to cultivate those virtues which are most favorable to His solicitations and inspirations. Thus the sum of spiritual life consists in observing and yielding to the movements of the Spirit of God in our soul, employing for this purpose all the exercises of prayer, spiritual reading, the practice of virtues, and good works.
"That divine action which is the immediate and principal cause of the salvation and perfection of the soul, claims by right the soul's direct and main attention. From this source within the soul there will gradually come to birth the consciousness of the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit, out of which will spring a force surpassing all human strength, a courage higher than all human heroism, a sense of dignity excelling all human greatness. The light the age requires for its renewal can come only from the same source. The renewal of the age depends on the renewal of religion. The renewal of religion depends on a greater effusion of the creative and renewing power of the Holy Spirit. The greater effusion of the Holy Spirit depends on the giving of increased attention to His movements and inspirations in the soul. The radical and adequate remedy for all the evils of our age, and the source of all true progress, consist in increased attention and fidelity to the action of the Holy Spirit in the soul. 'Thou shalt send forth Thy spirit and they shall be created: and Thou shalt renew the face of the earth.'"
Lallemant's answer to the difficulty of excess of personal liberty in this method has been already given. Father Hecker's own is as follows:
"The enlargement of the [interior] field of action for the soul, without a true knowledge of the end and scope of the external authority of the Church, would only open the door to delusions, errors, and heresies of every description, and would be in effect only another form of Protestantism. But, on the other hand, the exclusive view of the external authority of the Church, without a proper understanding of the nature and work of the Holy Spirit in the soul, would render the practice of religion formal, obedience servile, and the Church sterile.
"The solution of the difficulty is as follows: The action of the Holy Spirit embodied visibly in the authority of the Church, and the action of the Holy Spirit dwelling invisibly in the soul form one inseparable synthesis; and he who has not a clear conception of this two-fold action of the Holy Spirit is in danger of running into one or the other, and sometimes into both, of these extremes, either of which is destructive of the end of the Church. The Holy Spirit, in the external authority of the Church, acts as the infallible interpreter and criterion of divine revelation. The Holy Spirit in the soul acts as the divine Life-giver and Sanctifier. It is of the highest importance that these two distinct offices of the Holy Spirit should not be confounded.
"The increased action of the Holy Spirit, with a more vigorous co-operation on the part of the faithful, which is in process of realization, will elevate the human personality to an intensity of force and grandeur productive of a new era to the Church and to society—an era difficult for the imagination to grasp, and still more difficult to describe in words, unless we have recourse to the prophetic language of the inspired Scriptures."
"The way out of our present difficulties," said Father Hecker, speaking of the conflicts of religion in Europe, "is to revert to a spirituality which is freer than that which Providence assigned as the counteraction of Protestantism in the sixteenth century—to a spirituality which is, and ever has been, the normal one of the Christian inner life. That era accentuated obedience, this accentuates no particular moral virtue, but rather presses the soul back upon Faith and Hope and Love as the springs of life, and makes the distinctive virtue fidelity to the guidance of the Holy Spirit, impelling the Christian to that one of the moral virtues which is most suitable to his nature and to the requirements of his state of life, and other environments."
But from what has been said it must not be inferred that Father Hecker thought it safe to be without spiritual counsel, above all when the soul seemed led in extraordinary ways. He firmly believed in the necessity of direction, and that in the sense intended by spiritual writers generally. In practice he himself always consulted men of experience and piety. We have seen how he sought advice, and was aided by it at every crisis of his life. But he did not accept all that is said by some writers about the surrender of the soul to one's father confessor. He thought that confession was often too closely allied with direction, and he was convinced that many souls could profit by less introspection in search of sin, and more in search of natural and supernatural movements to virtue. He condemned over-direction, and thought that there was a good deal of it. He thought that there were cases in which spontaneity of effort was too high a price to pay for even the merit of obedience. His sentiment is well expressed by St. John of the Cross in the ninth chapter of The Ascent of Mount Carmel:
"Spiritual directors are not the chief workers, but rather the Holy Ghost; they are mere instruments, only to guide souls by the rule of faith and the law of God according to the spirit which God gives to each. Their object, therefore, should be not to guide souls by a way of their own, suitable to themselves; but to ascertain, if they can, the way which God Himself is guiding them."
Leave much to God's secret ways, was one of Father Hecker's principles. "When hearing some confessions on the missions," he once said, "and when about to give absolution, I used to say, in my heart, to the penitent, Well, no doubt God means to save you, you poor fellow, or He wouldn't give you the grace to make this mission. But just how He will do it, considering your bad habits, I can't see; but that's none of my business."
Leave much to natural or acquired inclinations, was one of his maxims. He was not deeply interested in souls who by temperament or training needed very minute guidance in the spiritual life; to him they seemed so overloaded with harness as to have no great strength left for pulling the chariot. But he would not interfere with them; he knew that it was of little avail to try to change such methods once they had become habitual; and he recognized that there were many who could never get along without them. At any rate he was tolerant by nature, and slow to condemn in general or particular anything useful to well-meaning souls.
"It is vain to rise before the light," was another motto. "Make no haste in the time of clouds." These two texts of Scripture he was fond of repeating. "When God shows the way," he once said, "you will see; no amount of peering in the dark will bring the sun over the hills. Pray for light, but don't move an inch before you get it. When it comes, go ahead with all your might." Self-imposed penances, self-assumed devotional practices he mistrusted. He was convinced that the only way sure to succeed, and to succeed perfectly, was either that shown by an interior attraction too powerful and too peaceful to be other than divine, or one pointed out by the lawful external authority in the Church.
When asked for advice on matters of conscience his decisions were generally quick and always simple. Yet he often refused to decide without time for prayer and thought, saying, "I have no lights on this matter; you must give me time." And not seldom he refused to decide altogether for the same reason. One thing annoyed him much, and that was the blank silence and stupid wonder with which some instructed Catholics listened to him as he spoke of the guidance of the Holy Spirit as the way of Christian perfection, treating it as beyond the reach of ordinary mortals, intricate in its rules, "mystical," and visionary; whereas Father Hecker knew it to be the one only simple method, with a minimum of rules, useful for all, readily understood. What follows is a brief outline of the entire doctrine in it practical use in the progress or the soul from a sinful life onwards; we have found it among his memoranda:
"What must one do in order to favor the reception of the Holy Spirit, and secure fidelity to His guidance when received? First receive the Sacraments, the divinely instituted channels of grace: one will scarcely persevere in living in the state of grace, to say nothing of securing a close union with God, who receives Holy Communion only once or twice a year. Second, practise prayer, above all that highest form of prayer, assisting at Holy Mass; then mental and vocal prayer, the public offices of the Church, and particular devotions according to one's attrait. Third, read spiritual books daily—the Bible, Lives of the Saints, Following of Christ, Spiritual Combat, etc. But in all this bear ever in mind, that the steady impelling force by which one does each of these outward things is the inner and secret prompting of the Holy Ghost, and that perseverance in them is secured by no other aid except the same hidden inspiration. Cherish that above all, therefore, and in every stage of the spiritual life; be most obedient to it, seeking meantime for good counsel wherever it is likely to be had."
Father Hecker was of opinion that a larger number of persons can be led to perfection than is generally supposed, and he would sound the call in the ears of Christians generally far more than is commonly done. He was also persuaded that there are many souls whose whole lives have been entirely, or almost entirely, free from the taint of mortal sin, and these he considered should be the most active spirits among Christians. He thought that more room should be made for them in our discourses, and that everybody should not be lumped together in one mass as hardened sinners or as penitents.
To these innocent men and women the mediatorship of Christ should be made as distinct as possible, the elevation of the soul to divine union through the Incarnation brought out fully, and the redemption of man from sin and hell be included in it, and be absorbed by it. Too many souls who have never sinned mortally fail to struggle for perfection, Father Hecker often said, because they never have heard any invitation but the call to repentance. The positive side of Christianity is the Incarnation, which lifts all men of good-will, repentant and innocent alike, into participation with the Deity. Father Hecker would talk by the hour of the need of bringing that view of our Lord's mission most prominently forward, the idea of redemption applying to innocent souls only on account of original sin, and by sympathy with their brethren infected by actual sin. And he would show that even hard sinners could often be brought to a good life more surely, and be enabled more certainly to persevere, by forcibly emphasizing the Incarnation and its benefits than by any other method. Their blindness and selfishness hinder hard sinners from easily appreciating our Lord's sufferings as borne on their account. Father Hecker regretted that the idea of redemption was so often presented in a way to give the impression that atonement was the whole office of Christ. There are many souls for whom access to Christ as Mediator was more in consonance with the truth than access to Him as Redeemer, Mediator in that case including Redeemer, rather than the Redeemer absorbing the idea of Mediator. Redemption from original sin is, of course, necessary to the mediatorship of a fallen race. But our Lord became Redeemer that he might be Mediator; he cleansed us from sin that he might lift us up to the Godhead; and in many souls Father Hecker knew that the process of cleansing began and ended with original sin and venial sins. Such souls often go their lives long with no compelling stimulus to perfection, because they cannot apply to themselves the accusations of sin commonly put into the directions for beginners.
Much has been already said of the aids to perfection which Father Hecker perceived in a right use of the liberty and intelligence of our times. He also insisted that the commercial and industrial features of our civilization were no obstacles to a high state of Christian perfection.
In a remarkable sermon, entitled "The Saint of Our Day," published in the third volume of the Paulist series, Father Hecker, after making a powerful exposition of the advantages of liberty and intelligence as helps to the interior life, insists that the opportunities and responsibilities peculiar to our civilization are capable of being sanctified to the highest degree. The model he proposes in this sermon is St. Joseph. He was no martyr, yet showed a martyr's fidelity by his trust in God.
"Called by the voice of God to leave his friends, home, and country, he obeys instantly and without a murmur. To find God and to be one with God, a solitary life in the desert was not necessary to St. Joseph. He was in the world and found God where he was. He sanctified his work by carrying God with him into the workshop. St. Joseph was no flower of the desert or plant of the cloister; he found the means of perfection in the world, and consecrated it to God by making its cares and duties subservient to divine purposes.
"The house of St. Joseph was his cloister, and in the bosom of his family he practised the sublimest virtues. While occupied with the common daily duties of life his mind was fixed on the contemplation of divine truths, thus breathing into all his actions a heavenly influence. He attained in society and in human relationships a degree of perfection not surpassed, if equalled, by the martyr's death, the contemplative of the solitude, the cloistered monk, or the missionary hero.
"Our age is not an age of martyrdom, nor an age of hermits, nor a monastic age. Although it has its martyrs, its recluses, and its monastic communities, these are not, and are not likely to be, its prevailing types of Christian perfection. Our age lives in its busy marts, in counting-rooms, in workshops, in homes, and in the varied relations that form human society, and it is into these that sanctity is to be introduced. St. Joseph stands forth as an excellent and unsurpassed model of this type of perfection. These duties and these opportunities must be made instrumental in sanctifying the soul. For it is the difficulties and the hindrances that men find in their age which give the form to their character and habits, and when mastered become the means of divine grace and their titles to glory. Indicate these, and you portray that type of sanctity in which the life of the Church will find its actual and living expression.
"This, then, is the field of conquest for the heroic Christian of our day. Out of the cares, toils, duties, afflictions, and responsibilities of daily life are to be built the pillars of sanctity of the Stylites of our age. This is the coming form of the triumph of Christian virtue."
With all, moreover, Father Hecker insisted on the practice of the natural virtues, honesty, temperance, truthfulness, kindliness. courage, and manliness generally, as preceding any practical move towards the higher life. He first explored the character and life of his penitent in search of what natural power he had, and then demanded its full exertion. He began with the natural man, and made every supernatural force in the sacraments and prayer aid in establishing and increasing natural virtue as a necessary preliminary and ever-present accompaniment of supernatural progress. Perhaps Father Hecker's antipathy to Calvinism sharpened his zeal for the natural virtues, and strengthened his advocacy of human innocence. The craving for the supernatural, he was convinced, would be strong in proportion to the enlightenment of the natural reason; the need of the grace of God is, of course, most urgent in a sinful state, but it would be more quickly perceived in proportion to the possession of natural virtue. As the exercise of reason is necessary to faith and precedes its acts, so the integrity of natural virtue is the best preparation for the grace of God. Many pages of The Aspirations of Nature, from which the following brief quotations are made, are devoted to the dignity of humanity and the need of placing the excellence of human nature in the foreground when considering how man may attain to a high supernatural state:
"Every faculty of the soul, rightly exercised, leads to truth; every instinct of our nature has an eternal destiny attached to it. Catholicity finds its support in these and employs them in all her developments."
"The Catholic religion is wonderfully calculated and adapted to call forth, sustain, and perfect the tastes, propensities, and peculiarities of human nature. And let no one venture to say that these characteristics which are everywhere found among men are to be repressed rather than encouraged. This is to despise human nature, this is to mar the work of God. For are not these peculiarities inborn? Are they not implanted in us by the hand of our Creator? Are they not what go to constitute our very individuality?"
Humanity is a word of vague meaning to most ears, but to Father Hecker its meaning was a living thing of value second only to Christianity. Here is his summary of the relation of Catholicity to human nature, taken from the same source as the foregoing:
"Catholicity is that religion which links itself to all the faculties of the mind, appropriates all the instincts of human nature, and by thus concurring with the work of the Creator affirms its own Divine origin."
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. Two-thirds of our life and more is animal—including sleep. I do not despise the animal in man, but I go in for fair play for the soul. The better part should have the greater share. The right order of things has been reversed: con-version is necessary. Read the lives of the old Fathers of the Desert. They determined on leading a rational and divine life. How little are they known or appreciated in our day! Their lives are more interesting than a novel and stranger than a romance."
"Self-love, self-activity, self-hood, is something not easily destroyed. It is like a cancer which has its roots extending to the most delicate fibres of our mental and moral nature. Divine grace can draw them all out. But how slowly! And how exquisitely painful is the process—the more subtle the self-love the more painful the cure."
"Never practise any mortification of a considerable character without counsel. The devil, when he can no longer keep us back, aims at driving us too far and too fast."
"How can the intellect be brought under direction of divine grace except by reducing it to its nothingness?—and how can this be done except by placing it in utter darkness? How can the heart be filled with the spirit of divine love while it contains any other? How can it be purified of all other inordinate love except by dryness and bitterness? God wishes to fill our intelligence and our hearts with divine light and love, and thus to deify our whole nature—to make us one with what we represent—God. And how can He do this otherwise than by removing from our soul and its faculties all that is contrary to the divine order?"
"All your difficulties are favors from God; you see them on the wrong side, and speak as the block of marble would while being chiselled by the sculptor. When God purifies the soul, it cries out just like little children do when their faces are washed. The soul's attention must be withdrawn from external, created things and turned inward towards God exclusively before its union with Him; and this transformation is a great, painful, and wonderful work, and so much the more difficult and painful as the soul's attention has been attracted and attached to transitory things—to creatures."
He was often heard repeating the following verse from The Imitation (book iii. chap. xxxi.), as summarizing the necessary conditions of the active life: "Unless a man be elevated in spirit, and set at liberty from all creatures, and wholly united to God, whatever he knows and whatever he has is of no great weight." He wrote to a friend that he had studied that verse for thirty years and still found that he did not know all it meant.
We give what follows as characteristic of Father Hecker's manner as a director:
"At first, in all your deliberate actions, calm your mind, place yourself in the attitude of a receiver or listener, and then decide. Imperceptibly and insensibly grace will guide you."
"Don't care what people say; keep your own counsel. Use your own sense and abound in it; as the apostle says: 'Let every one abound in his own sense.' Don't try to get anybody to agree with you. No two noses are alike, much less souls. God never repeats."
"Nobody nowadays wants God. Every one has the whole world on his shoulders, and unless his own petty ideas and schemes are adopted and succeed, he prophesies the end of the world. You are on the right road—push on! Our maxim is: Be sure you are right and then go ahead!"
"How much that is good and noble in the soul is smothered by unwise restraint! The whole object of restraint is to reject that which is false and to correct the preference given to a lower good instead of to a higher one. As for the rest—freedom!
"I know a man who thinks he don't know anything—who every day knows that he knows less; and who hopes to know nothing before he dies. O blessed emptiness which fills us with all! O happy poverty which possesses all! 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. To be Father Hecker's penitent meant the privilege of sooner or later being nobody's penitent but the Holy Ghost's. The following rules of direction he printed in 1887:
"The work of the priesthood is to help to guide the Christian people, understanding that God is always guiding them interiorly.
"An innocent soul we must guide, fully understanding that God is dwelling within him; not as a substitute for God.
"A repentant sinner we must guide, understanding that we are but restoring him to God's guidance.
"The best that we can do for any Christian is to quicken his sense of fidelity to God speaking to him in an enlightened conscience.
"Now, God's guidance is of two kinds: one is that of His external providence in the circumstances of life; the other is interior, and is the direct action of the Holy Spirit on the human soul. There is great danger in separating these two.
"The key to many spiritual problems is found in this truth: The direct action of God upon the soul, which is interior, is in harmony with his external providence. Sanctity consists in making them identical as motives for every thought, word, and deed of our lives. The external and the internal (and the same must be said of the natural and supernatural) are one in God, and the consciousness of them both is to be made one divine whole in man. To do this requires an heroic life-sanctity.
"All the sacraments of the Church, her authority, prayer both mental and vocal, spiritual reading, exercises of mortification and of devotion, have for their end and purpose to lead the soul to the guidance of the Holy Spirit. St. Alphonsus says in his letters that the first director of the soul is the Holy Ghost Himself.
"It is never to be forgotten that one man can never be a guide to another except as leading him to his only Divine Guide.
"The guide of the soul is the Holy Spirit Himself, and the criterion or test of possessing that guide is the Divine authority of the Church."
What follows was published by Father Hecker in The Catholic World in 1887. It throws new light on the questions we have been considering, abounding in practical rules of direction, and therefore, though somewhat long, we venture to close the chapter with it:
"'If any one shall say that without the previous inspiration of the Holy Spirit and His aid, a man can believe, hope, love, or repent as he should, so that the grace of justification may be conferred upon him, let him be anathema.'
"These are the words of the holy Council of Trent, in which the Catholic Church infallibly teaches that without an interior movement of the indwelling Holy Spirit no act of the soul can be meritorious of heaven. This doctrine, embodying the plain sense of Holy Scripture and the unbroken teaching of the Church in all ages, bases human justification on an interior impulse of the Third Person of the Divine Trinity. This impulse precedes the soul's acts of faith, hope, and love, and of sorrow for sin: the first stage in the supernatural career, then, is the entering of the Holy Spirit into the inner life of the soul. The process of justification begins by the divine life of the indwelling Spirit taking up into itself the human life of the soul.
"Nor is this to the detriment of man's liberty, but rather to its increase. The infinite independence of God and his divine liberty are shared by man exactly in proportion as he partakes of God's life in the communication of the Holy Spirit.
"If it be asked how the Holy Spirit is received, the answer is, Sacramentally. 'Unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.' As man by nature is a being of both outer and inner life, so, when made a new man by the Spirit of God and elevated into a supernatural state, God deals with him by both outer and inner methods. The Holy Spirit is received by the sacramental grace of baptism and renewed by the other sacraments; also in prayer, vocal or mental, hearing sermons, reading the Scriptures or devout books, and on occasions, extraordinary or ordinary, in the course of daily life; and when once received every act of the soul that merits heaven is done by the inspiration of that Divine Guide dwelling within us. Even though unperceived, though indistinguishable from impulses of natural virtue, though imperceptibly multiplied as often as the instants are, yet each movement of heaven-winning virtue, and especially love, hope, faith, and repentance, is made because the Holy Spirit has acted upon the soul in an efficacious manner.
"It is not to induce a strained outlook for the particular cases of the action of the Spirit of God on us, or the signs of it, that these words are written. The sacraments, prayer and holy reading, and hearing sermons and instructions, are the plain, external instruments and accompaniments of the visitations of God, and are sufficient landmarks for the journey of the soul, unless it be led in a way altogether extraordinary. And apart from these external marks, no matter how you watch for God, his visitations are best known by their effects; it is after the cause has been placed, perhaps some considerable time after, that the faith, hope, love, or sorrow becomes perceptibly increased—always excepting extraordinary cases. Not to 'resist the Spirit' is the first duty. Fidelity to the divine guidance, yielding one's self up lovingly to the impulses of virtue as they gently claim control of our thoughts—this is the simple duty.
"Having laid down in broad terms the fundamental doctrine of the supernatural life, it is proper to say a word of the natural virtues and of their relation to the supernatural. It has been already intimated that the goodness of nature is often indistinguishable from the holiness of the supernatural life; and, indeed, as a rule, impulses of the Holy Spirit first pour their floods into the channels of natural virtue, thus rendering them supernatural. These are mainly the cardinal virtues: Prudence, Justice, Fortitude, and Temperance. Practised in a state of nature, these place us in our true relations with our nature and with God's providence in all created nature around us; these are the virtues which choice souls among the heathen practised. They are not enough. When they have done their utmost they leave a void in the heart that still yearns for more. It is the purpose of the Spirit of God to raise our virtue to a grade far above nature. The practice of the virtues of faith hope, and love, which bring the soul into direct communication with God, and which, when practised under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, are supernatural, following upon the practice of the cardinal virtues under the same guidance, place the soul in its true and perfect relation with God—a state which is more than natural.
"Let us, if we would see things clearly, keep in sight the difference between the natural and supernatural. In the natural order a certain union with God was possessed by man in all ages in common with every creature. The union of the creature with the divine creative power is something which man can neither escape from nor be robbed of. But in the case of rational creatures this union is, even in a state of nature, made far closer and its enjoyment increased by a virtuous life—one in which reason is superior to appetite; a life only to be led by one assisted, if not by the indwelling Holy Spirit peculiar to the grace of Christ, yet by the helps necessary to natural virtue and called medicinal graces. The practice of the four cardinal virtues—Prudence, Justice, Fortitude, and Temperance—in the ordinary natural state gave to guileless men and women in every age a natural union with their Creator. Although we maintain that such natural union with God is not enough for man, yet we insist that the part the natural virtues play in man's sanctification be recognized. In considering a holy life natural virtues are too often passed over, either because the men who practised them in heathen times were perhaps few in number, or because of the Calvinistic error that nature and man are totally corrupt.
"And we further insist on the natural virtues because they tend to place man in true relations with himself and with nature, thus bringing him into more perfect relation or union with God than he was by means of the creative act—a proper preliminary to his supernatural relation. Who will deny that there were men not a few among the heathen in whom Prudence, Justice, Fortitude, and Temperance were highly exemplified? They knew well enough what right reason demanded. Such men as Socrates, Plato, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius had by the natural light of reason a knowledge of what their nature required of them. They had faults, great ones if you please; at the same time they knew them to be faults, and they had the natural virtues in greater or less degrees. Thus the union between God and the soul, due to the creative act, though not sufficient, never was interrupted. The Creator and the Mediator are one."
