This is the seventh in a series of previously unpublished reflections from the 1854 spiritual notebook of Paulist Founder, Servant of God Father Isaac T. Hecker. The reflection series is being made public in conjunction with Father Hecker’s cause for canonization. Following the reflection is a response from Father Paul Robichaud, CSP, Paulist historian and postulator for the Cause for Canonization of Father Hecker.

Home in God

The soul is at home in God as a man under his own roof, or a babe is in the arms of its mother. The French have no word equivalent to our word “home,” but a phrase which explains it: chez soi (at home). It is so true that man is not himself till he has found his home: in God. Mother Juliana (of Norwich) wrote: “Highly are we to enjoy that God dwells in our soul; and more highly are we to enjoy that our soul dwells in God. Our soul is made to be God’s dwelling place: and the dwelling of our soul is God, which is unmade. It is a high understanding to inwardly see and know that God, who is our Maker dwells in our soul, and it is a higher understanding to more inwardly see and know that our soul which is created, dwells in God’s substance; and so we are what we are, by God.”

(Again Mother Julianna writes) “The cause for which we battle and suffer is the unknowing of love. For some believe God is almighty and may do all; and that God is all wisdom and can do all; but here is where we fail, not believing that God is all love and will do all. This unknowing is the greatest obstacle to God’s lovers.”

Quotes from “Showings of Divine Love,” Julian of Norwich (1342-1416)

A Response from Father Paul Robichaud CSP

Here is a mystic reading another mystic. Father Hecker, whose spirituality was grounded in his belief in the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, cites Julian of Norwich’s Showings. Julian writes that through the Holy Spirit present in the soul, God the Trinity finds a dwelling place in each of us. That the very being of God sits within our created being. But she is not content with the fact that God dwells within us. Because God has found a dwelling place in our souls, we have within us extraordinary possibility. Because we dwell in the very substance of God, within each of us is the door, the gateway to God. Father Hecker, filled with hope and believing in extraordinary possibility, must have loved reading Julian’s words, “we are what we are by God.” God continues the process of creating us and bringing us to fulfillment.

Father Hecker cites a second text from Julian. For Julian the problem of sin and evil comes from lack of knowledge, what she calls “unknowing.” Julian writes about the feminine as well as the masculine attributes of God. God as father has power and goodness and God as mother has wisdom and love, drawn from the courtly culture of the high Middle Ages. The greatest obstacle to faith is not the “knowing” of God’s power but the “knowing” of God’s love. If we are to use the gateway to God within our being, we need to be lovers as well as doers in order to grow closer to God. Here the mystic side of Julian and Father Hecker serves as a basis of acting in faith; letting the world “know” that God is love.

About Father Isaac Hecker’s 1854 Spiritual Notebook:

Servant of God, Father Isaac Hecker wrote these spiritual notes as a young Redemptorist priest about 1854 and they have never been published. Father Hecker was 34 years old at the time, and had been ordained a priest for five years. He loved his work as a Catholic evangelist. The Redemptorist mission band had expanded out of the New York state area to the south and west, and the band’s national reputation grew. Hecker had begun to focus his attention on Protestants who came out to hear them. To this purpose Father Hecker began to write in 1854 his invitation to Protestant America to consider the Catholic Church, “Questions of the Soul” which would make him a national figure in the American church.

Father Hecker collected and organized these notes that include writings and stories from St. Alphonsus Liguori, the Jesuit spiritual writer Louis Lallemant and his disciple Jean Surin, the German mystic John Tauler, St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Jane de Chantal among others. These notes were a resource for retreat work and spiritual direction and show Father Hecker’s growing proficiency in traditional Catholic spirituality some ten years after his conversion to the Catholic faith. They are composed of short thematic reflections.

Publishing and disseminating the writing of Servant of God Father Isaac Hecker is the work of the Office for Father Hecker’s Cause.