Today is the 125th anniversary of the death of Servant of God isaac Hecker (1819-1888), the founder of the Paulist Fathers.
Having founded the Paulists in 1858, Hecker immediately began more than decade of intense activity. His
priorities as New York parish pastor and Paulist Superior during this period were pastoral and missionary work, ultimately
oriented to the evangelization of American society. As he wrote in January
1860, “By degrees I find my future work open up before me. I begin to see into
the future, and feel impressed that God will in His providence make use of our
community for the conversion of this country.” Throughout this period (and
indeed the rest of his life) Hecker remained convinced, as he wrote to Orestes
Brownson in 1870, “that religion is the basis of all society, and its dogmas
the foundation of all political principles.”
In
his preaching, lecturing, and writing, Isaac Hecker self-consciously sought and
promoted images and models of holiness which he believed resonated well within
the new context created by what he saw happening in the modern world. An
excellent example of this is his often quoted 1863 St. Joseph’s Day sermon, The Saint of Our Day. Just as every
secular age has its own characteristics, expressed in its art, science, and
politics, likewise in the Church, Hecker argued, “There is something about the
sanctity of each age peculiar to itself.” Consistent with his theology of the
Church and his understanding of the role of free individuals in modern society,
he constantly sought to promote an understanding of and devotion to the Church,
which would be consistent with the kind of contemporary holiness he believed
most relevant for the circumstances of the modern age. Speaking of his own
time, Hecker observed, “Our age lives in its busy marts, in counting-rooms, in
work-shops, in homes, and in the varied relations that form human society, and
it is into these that sanctity is to be introduced.”
Hecker’s
exuberant confidence during this period in the church’s triumphant future
reflected his own spiritual experience of God’s providence in his life, which
he memorably expressed in an 1864 letter reflecting on the 20th anniversary
of his baptism: “To me my life has been one continued growth; and hence I have
never had any desire to return to any part or period of it. This applies as
well to my life before I was received into the Church as after. My best life
was always in the present. … In looking back on this lapse of time, I find no
step to regret, and those of importance in their bearing on my life seem to me
now providential. I cannot do better than trust to that guidance which has
brought me thus far, to be its agent.”
Looking
back on Hecker’s ideas from the vantage point of the present, we can appreciate
his consistent commitment to call American Catholics to the fullness of their
mission to evangelize their society and – to that end - to enhance the quality
of Church life, to build up the Catholic Church in the United States, just as
the Paulist church and parish were being built up in New York City. St. Paul the
Apostle Parish’s early emphases on liturgy and preaching were clear examples of
that commitment to the qualitative enhancement of American Catholic communal
life. We are even more apt to appreciate today the importance of internal
Church community life for the effectiveness of its mission outward to society.
As Rodney Stark, for example, has argued in his analysis of the growth of early
Christianity, “social networks are the basic mechanism through which conversion
takes place., Stark also noted that most religions “draw their converts mainly
from the ranks of the religiously inactive or alienated.” [Cities of God: The Real Story of How Christianity Became an Urban
Movement and Conquered Rome, HarperCollins, 2006]
Although
Hecker remained Paulist General Superior and parish pastor from 1858 through
his death in 1888, the last period of Hecker’s life was dominated by physical
illness and suffering. So, from 1872 on, Augustine Hewit increasingly bore the
burden of shepherding the fledgling Paulist Community, while one of the other
Paulists served as acting pastor of the New York parish. Thus, not unlike the
experience of some other religious founders - St. Francis of Assisi (1181-1226) in
the 13th century, St. Alphonsus Liguori (1696-1787), the founder of the
Redemptorists, in the 18th, and Blessed Jeanne Jugan (1792-1879), the foundress
of the Little Sisters of the Poor, in Hecker’s own 19th century, Hecker’s last
years saw a reduction in ministerial activity that challenged him to
surrender himself totally to the Lord. Sickness
and suffering are complex human experiences, which elicit different reactions
and responses in different people. In Hecker’s case, unwanted sickness and suffering served to help
his final spiritual maturation in response to God’s grace, deepening his
relationship with the Lord and broadening his evangelizing zeal even as his
apostolic activity was curtailed.
Even
so, during this time he continued to contribute to The Catholic World, for
example, and even attended (briefly) the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore in
1884. Throughout the 1880s, Hecker engaged in written polemics on issues of
great contemporary importance to the Catholic community. In conspicuous
contrast to the secular press, he strongly supported the Papacy in its ongoing
dispute with the Kingdom of Italy (“the Roman Question”), and he pressed
forcefully for Catholics’ right to run their own separate school system.
The Church and the Age (1887) was Hecker’s final and mature formulation of
his core convictions about the Church and the contemporary world in general and
in particular the vexing question of Church and State - specifically in the
United States, Italy, and France (the latter two being the countries where
Church-State relations were persistently neuralgic in Hecker’s lifetime and
also where such issues had the most immediate impact on the concerns of the
government of the Universal Church).
The Church and the Age also offers Hecker’s mature insights on his
life-long preoccupation with the relationship between the
interior action of the Holy Spirit within the individual and the external
authority of the Church.
Hecker’s
illness, however, focused him on the one thing most important – his
relationship with God – always a greater and more important thing than anything
one does in life. In sentiments that recall St. Thomas Aquinas’ famous
experience shortly before his own death, Hecker expressed his own experience to
his close companion and disciple, Paulist Father Walter Elliott: “There was
once a priest who had been very active for God, until at last God gave him a knowledge
of the Divine Majesty. After seeing the majesty of God that priest felt very
strange and was much humbled, and knew how little a thing he was in comparison
with God.”
Finally
on December 22, 1888, Isaac Hecker died. In his eulogy at the funeral four days
later, the Jesuit Provincial recounted the scene at Hecker’s deathbed, when his
fellow Paulists asked for his final blessing. Hecker “aroused himself from the
depth of pain and exhaustion, and his ashen lips which death was sealing
pronounced the singular words … “I will give it in the shadow of death.” His
feeble hands were raised, and like a soldier dying on the field of battle he
reconsecrated his followers in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost for
the struggle in which they had chosen him as Leader.”
In
the early Church (and for some time thereafter), one of the major moments in the
development of devotion to a holy figure was the official transfer of his or
her relics to a more noteworthy location. In a kind of modern echo of that ancient and medieval practice of elevatio et translato, the community of the faithful centered around Hecker’s church in New
York gathered on January 24, 1959, to transfer Hecker’s remains to a magnificent new tomb, the work of American
artist and sculptor Lumen Martin Winter.
The transfer was
conducted with great solemnity, led by the Superior General of the Paulist
Fathers and accompanied by a Knights of Columbus Honor Guard from Manhattan, the Bronx, Queens, and Staten Island. His body was removed from
the Paulist Fathers’ Crypt, placed in a new coffin, then solemnly carried up the steps and into the church, where a Pontifical Requiem Mass was
sung by Bishop Edward V. Dargin, Auxiliary Bishop and Vicar General of the
Archdiocese of New York. At the end of that Mass, a sermon was preached by
Bishop Philip J. Furlong, Auxiliary Bishop of New York and Delegate to the
Military Ordinariate.
“But
what,” asked the Bishop, ”was there about the man, his
background, and upbringing, his achievements, that would explain why almost a
century and a half after his birth a great congregation would be gathered in
this noble church, itself world famous for the treasures that are part of its
very fabric, to do honor to him? The answer is not to be found in the ways of
men; rather here is an example of the power of divine grace.”
Summarizing Hecker’s legacy, Bishop Furlong proclaimed: “In the fellowship of
the Saints, as St. Paul proclaimed it, Father Hecker recognized a call to his
followers to make their influence felt so that America would become Catholic. …
The vocation to participate in this mission was to be shared alike by the
priests of his Congregation and the people. All this, to be effective, must
rest upon the personal sanctification of the individual Catholic. And the way
of this – so simple, Saint Paul’s way: ‘For me to live is Christ’.”
