Servant of God Isaac Thomas Hecker wrote:

The more charitable we are, the more we are like God and things that are alike readily unite. It follows that charity is the most immediate and the most expeditious means of our union with God. It is through the practice of charity that one learns to forget about self, the more God is watchful over us. For he who has totally forgotten oneself is wholly directed by God. It is through charity that God dwells within us.

Commentary by Father Paul Robichaud, CSP

Father Hecker understood how God’s love worked within the soul. As St. Paul said in Romans 5: “God has poured out in love into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which he has given to us.” God has first loved us and begun a mutual exchange of love in which the Christian grows in God. God’s love and then ours in response brings a growing union between God and ourselves.

Hecker wrote that charity begins as a response to God’s love in us. As we practice charity we begin to experience a forgetfulness of self. It is not about us and our generosity. Finally we begin to see the face of God in the other. As we do, our charity grows into a mutual affection with God and we learn that God an not the other is the true object of our charity.

About this series

Father Paul Robichaud, CSP, is the historian of the Paulist Fathers and postulator of the Cause of Father Hecker. His office is located at the Hecker Center in Washington, D.C.

If you have asked Father Hecker to pray for you or another person who is ill and you believe something miraculous has happened, please phone Father Robichaud at 202-269-2519 or write to [email protected] and tell him your story.