Hecker, hope and consecrated life
by Father Ronald A. Franco, CSP
December 18, 2014

Today, December 18, was the 195th anniversary of Paulist founder and Servant of God, Father Isaac Hecker’s birth in 1819. December 22 will mark the 126th anniversary of his death at the Paulist mother church in 1888.

Pope Francis had three aims in declaring the Year of Consecrated Life. The first is “to look to the past with gratitude,” something that comes naturally to us Paulists at this time of year when we recall our founder’s birth and death. The second and third aims are “to live the present with passion” and “to embrace the future with hope.”

In regard to the second aim, the pope is asking those in religious communities, having remembered our past, to then “listen attentively to what the Holy Spirit is saying to the Church today, to implement ever more fully the essential aspects of our consecrated life.”

One of the things that was so strikingly distinctive about Hecker’s approach to religious life was his intense personal devotion to the Holy Spirit and his desire among all an increased appreciation of and openness to the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. In terms of what the Holy Spirit may be saying to the Church today, Hecker saw his new community as an expression of a special grace given to meet the special needs of our epoch and thus “renew the life of the members of the Church and extend her fold.”

Specifically, the pope proposes the following questions to religious communities: “If and how we too are open to being challenged by the Gospel; whether the Gospel is truly the ‘manual’ for our daily living and the decisions we are called to make.” I think that challenge was also evident in the 2014 Paulist General Assembly’s call for radical personal and communal conversion, which will be a special focus for our community throughout this year of Consecrated Life and especially during our community retreat next summer.

Throughout his life, Hecker lived in hope. As he once wrote in  a letter to a friend: “Living and working in the dawning light of an approaching, brighter, more glorious future for God’s Holy Church. A future whose sun will rise first on this continent and spread its light over the world.”

Such hope is the great gift God has given to the world in giving us his Son, Jesus, who was born into our world at Christmas and continues to live among us and renew us, Christmas after Christmas.

In this blessed Christmas season, it is my prayer that that same hope will continue to guide and inspire each one of us as we work our way through our daily lives, filled with faith and transformed by love.

May the many blessings of sacred season be poured out in abundance upon all of us at Immaculate Conception parish and spread throughout the world throughout this coming new year!