September 8, 2021
- Young Hecker travels a winding path till Church satisfies his ‘wants of soul’ Fr. Isaac Hecker: 19th-century pastor, 21st-century saint (second in a series)
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- Tell us about your life as an Associate
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- Prayer for the Intercession of Fr. Isaac T. Hecker
by Fr. Ron Franco, C.S.P.
Hecker 19th Century Pastor 21st Century Saint 
The following selection is the second installment of the preliminary lengthy presentation of the case. Further segments of the document will be published in future issues of Associates World. Meanwhile, those interested can read the statement in its entirety by connecting to this link:
Find the complete document at paulist.org/hecker21.
Isaac Hecker was born in New York City on December 18, 1819. His father, John Jonas Hecker, a skilled metalworker of German-Dutch descent, had immigrated in 1798 and married another German immigrant, Caroline Freund, at New York’s Old Dutch Church in 1811. The couple had five children, of whom four survived infancy: John (1812), Elizabeth (1816), George (1818), and Isaac. Isaac’s father deserted the family in the late 1820s, and so it was Isaac’s mother who became the principal figure in Hecker’s childhood. According to Josephine Hecker, the wife of Isaac’s brother George, “the influence of his mother was of the most powerful kind.” Early in Isaac’s life, she became a Methodist and remained a devout Methodist the rest of her life. In an account of his life, which Hecker wrote in Rome in 1858, however, he stated that he received no religious instruction in his youth, religious belief being left for him to decide later,on his own – a state of affairs he characterized as typical in the United States at that time.
With or without formal religious instruction, however, he probably attended Sunday services with his Methodist mother – enough to demonstrate familiarity years later with Methodist worship. Methodism, then the largest religious group in the country, “was a religion of the upward aspiring at a time when ‘self-improvement’ was itself almost a religion.” And, from an early age, Hecker believed in God’s special providence – that God had a providential plan for his life. This is reflected in the first of the six images at the base of Fr. Hecker’s sarcophagus in St. Paul the Apostle Church, which shows Isaac as a sick child, in danger of death from smallpox, reassuring his mother: “No, mother, I shall not die now; God has work for me to do in the world, and I shall live to do it.”
Hecker survived the smallpox, but it left his face permanently scarred and affected his eyesight, requiring him to wear eyeglasses from age twenty. In 1826, he began his formal education at the local New York City Public School 7. The next year, however, his maternal grandfather died. Isaac’s formal education ended, and he went to work as an apprentice at the office of a local Methodist newspaper, where he folded newspapers for mailing. His limited education hardly suggested the profundity of his future thinking.
Meanwhile, Isaac’s father’s failure to provide for his family had effectively transferred that responsibility to Isaac’s two older brothers, John and George. They became bakers and eventually owned four shops and their own flour mill. By 1834, Isaac had joined his brothers as baker and delivery boy. Thus, the second image at the base of Hecker’s sarcophagus shows him as a young man along the Hudson River wharves delivering bread from his brothers’ bakery.
“How hard I used to work carrying the bread around in my baker’s cart. How often I got stuck in the gutters and in the snow,” Hecker later recalled. “I have had the blood spurt out of my arm carrying bread when I was a baker.” Even then, however, Hecker was asking big picture questions about the direction of his life.
Often in my boyhood, when lying at night on the shavings before the oven in the bake house, I would start up, roused in spite of myself, by some great thought … What does God desire from me? What shall I attain unto Him? What is it He has sent me into the world to do? These were the ceaseless questions of my heart, that rested, meanwhile, in an unshaken confidence that time would bring the answer.
Fortunately for Isaac’s ceaselessly questioning heart, “Hecker and Brothers, Makers of Hecker Flour” had become a successful, quite prosperous business, and the Hecker brothers became sufficiently wealthy to be able to support him in his increasing attention to his spiritual interests.
The Hecker brothers were also very actively involved in Jacksonian-era New York Democratic Party politics, and John Hecker was one of the leaders of the Locofocos, a pro-reform faction. Their background “was perfect soil for the democratic radicalism of the Workingmen’s movement within Jacksonian democracy.” They “saw political solutions in terms of radical democracy, and focused their activity on reform movements.” In his 1858 narrative of his life, Isaac described his own youthful political interests:
At the early age of twelve years my mind began to seek after the truth, and my heart was moved with the desire of doing good to others. The first channel in which my mind was directed in the discovery of the truth and of the means of benefiting my fellow men, was that of politics, a subject which is one of the earliest that occupies the thoughts of everyone born in a republic. Political reform was the first, therefore, to present itself as the remedy for existing evils and of rendering mankind happy.
After their defeat in the 1837 election, the Locofocos disappeared from the New York political scene, but John Hecker remained active in Democratic party politics all his life. His younger brother Isaac would remain committed to the tenets of Jacksonian democracy until his death. “The ominous outlook of popular politics at the present moment,” he wrote in 1887, “plainly shows that legislation such as we then proposed, and such as was then within the easy reach of State and national authority, would have forestalled difficulties whose settlement at this day threatens a dangerous disturbance of public order.”
Gradually, however, his priorities evolved from political to social to religious concerns. “The many miseries and the great wretchedness that exist in modern society, sprung,” he concluded, “from the want of the practical application of the moral principles of Christianity to the social relations between men.”
In American religious history, this was the era known as the Second Great Awakening, which aimed, according to Robert Bellah, “not only to convert individuals but to inspire communities so that they might establish and transform institutions.” In his 1858 summary account, Hecker simply said that he took some years examining the principal Protestant sects. Like Saint Augustine in the 4th-century, Hecker took time, sampling as many as possible of the leading contemporary religious ideas, none of which, however, answered the demands of his reason or proved satisfactory to his conscience. Confident that “it is not reasonable to suppose that [God] would implant in the soul such an ardent thirst for truth and not reveal it,” he eventually continued his search for the truth in the Catholic Church, “the place,” as he put it, “where it is supposed among Protestants the least to exist.”
According to his 1858 account:
The Catholic Church burst upon my vision as the object to which all my efforts had been unintentionally directed. It was not a change, but a sudden realization of all that had hitherto obscurely captivated my mind, and secretly attracted my heart.
In thus describing his spiritual quest and its seemingly surprising outcome, Hecker wanted to emphasize what would become his lifelong conviction that Catholicism was consistent with and indeed the true fulfillment of the aspirations of human nature – a 19th century version of the theme of St. Augustine’s Confessions: “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”
Meanwhile, in 1841, he had his first contact with Orestes Brownson (1803-1876). Toward the end of his life, Hecker recalled: “He [Brownson] was the master, I the disciple. God alone knows how much I am indebted to him.” Hecker “was interested in ideas and enjoyed extended discussions with Brownson,” while the older, more intellectual Brownson, although somewhat way of Hecker’s mystical tendencies, “was drawn to what he criticized in Hecker and knew, instinctively, that Hecker possessed something that he did not.” Importantly, Brownson also “always had an emphasis on the social dimension of Christianity, an emphasis that evolved into his stress upon the church.”
Hecker and Brownson would become perhaps the two most influential 19th century American converts to Catholicism. When Hecker first heard Brownson lecture in New York in early 1841, he was a prominent Unitarian minister, journalist, and active social reformer. Later that year, thanks to the initiative of the Hecker brothers, Brownson was back in New York to give more lectures and stayed with them at their home. At the time, besides being an intellectual influence, Brownson also became a personal friend and a help to Isaac and his family as they struggled to come to terms with the increasing intensity of his spiritual experience – experience that was leading him away not only from the family business, but also from marriage and other preoccupations. As he wrote in an 1843 Diary entry, “the actual around me has lost its hold.”
The third image at the base of Hecker’s sarcophagus shows him searching for God at Brook Farm – a transcendentalist, utopian community, founded in West Roxbury, Massachusetts by Brownson’s friend George Ripley in 1841. New England Transcendentalism had its roots in the Unitarian rejection of classical Calvinist doctrine and orthodox Christianity in general – what Hecker later characterized as “a gradual loosening of the Christian principles in men’s minds and a falling away into general scepticism.” According to Brook Farm’s founder, the Transcendentalists maintained “that the truth of religion does not depend on tradition, nor on historical facts, but has an infallible witness in the soul,” and that “the ultimate appeal on all moral questions, is not to a jury of scholars, a hierarchy of divines, or the prescriptions of the Creed, but to the common sense of the human race.” But, whereas “Unitarianism was a religion without energy or passion” (a religion, in Emerson’s words, of “pale negations”), “the transcendentalists sought to bring awe and ecstasy back to religion – and beyond that to everyday life.”
Such was the circle Hecker associated with in 1843 – first at Brook Farm and then at Bronson Alcott’s short-lived, somewhat more ascetic Fruitlands community. A smart, if formally relatively uneducated, working-class young man, Hecker was excited to enter this elite community and its intellectual life. This transcendentalist environment was quite conducive to Hecker’s intense preoccupation with exploring his inner life, and his companions nicknamed him “Ernest the Seeker,” the name of a character in a contemporary short story by William Henry Channing. Hecker certainly absorbed the Transcendentalists’ critique of mainline New England Protestantism. “Against Calvinism we had a particular grudge,” he later recalled.” To the end, he would critique “the Calvinistic error that nature and man are totally corrupt.”
Yet, while benefiting from an environment that encouraged him to value and explore his inner life, Hecker (in part, perhaps, because of the class difference) consistently maintained a certain intellectual independence from the beliefs of the Transcendentalists, thus enabling his exploration of his soul to lead to conclusions quite different from what the Transcendentalists believed. “I don’t know,” he wrote in 1843, “but that I will be unable to become one of the Community. In their life it is clear that they commune with different kind of objects from what I do.”
As he came to understand his inner spiritual experience in terms of the action of the Holy Spirit, he found himself more and more drawn to institutional Christianity. His early identification of Divine Providence with the indwelling Holy Spirit made theological sense of the continuity between nature and grace, which he felt from his own experience, thus easing his way into the Church and laying the groundwork for his mature thought about the relationship between Church and society and the evangelization of the latter by the former.
Fortunately for us, during this period from January 1842 to July 1845 as his spiritual search intensified, Hecker kept a remarkable Diary – an exploration of Hecker’s intensely personal experience of being drawn by God’s grace, in which we can follow his spiritual quest almost day-by-day. Many of the earlier entries reflect his association with the New England Transcendentalists and his 1843 sojourns at Brook Farm and Fruitlands, while the later entries recount his final journey into the Church and his first steps to discern his vocation within it. …
In 1843, one week after attending Easter Mass in a Roman Catholic Church, Hecker wrote in his diary:
The Catholic Church alone seems to satisfy my wants … my soul is catholic and that faith answers responds to my soul in its religious aspirations and its longings. I have not wished to make myself catholic but it answers to the wants of my soul. It is so rich full.
Still, for another year, Hecker continued his inner exploration and comparative study of different churches. He studied the Catechism of the Council of Trent (The Roman Catechism) and was especially impressed by Article IX on the doctrine of the communion of saints. Writing in the Paulist magazine, The Catholic World, one year before his death, Hecker recalled:
When, in 1843, I first read in the catechism of the Council of Trent the doctrine of the communion of saints, it went right home. It alone was to me a heavier weight on the Catholic side of the scales than the best historical argument which could be presented. … The body made alive by such truths ought to be of divine life and its origin traceable to a divine establishment: it ought to be the true church. The certainty of the distinctively Catholic doctrine of the union of God and men made the institution of the church by Christ exceedingly probable.
Then, in June 1844, Orestes Brownson suddenly informed him of his intention to become a Catholic.
A few days later, Hecker visited the Bishop of Boston and his Coadjutor Bishop, who in turn gave him a letter of introduction to the Coadjutor Bishop of New York, John McCloskey, who received Hecker into the Roman Catholic Church on August 1, 1844. Subsequently, Hecker and his brother George, who had followed Isaac into the Church, were both confirmed on May 18, 1845.
— Fr. Ronald Franco, CSP
(Continued in a future issue)
by Richard Allegra
Associates have been busy with spiritual reading in recent months.
One group recently completed, Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist by Brant Pitre, an “outstanding study” that gives a fresh look at the Sacrament.
Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste: The Origins of our Discontents was cited by other Associates as a timely book discussing social concerns and issues.
Knoxville Associates have held regular book discussions. Some of their favorites include:
- Signs of Life by Scott Hahn which shares the biblical roots of sacraments and traditions.
- St. Paul: A Bible Study Guide for Catholics was reviewed by Charles Jones in a previous Associates World.
They’re reading Paul: New Covenant Jew by Brant Pitre this month.
Other Associates are currently reading The Dark Night, by Marc Foley, OCD, a deep look at St. John of the Cross.
Denis Hurley, our Editor, highly recommends N.T. Wright’s Paul, A Biography, an accessible book that “makes sense of Paul in a way I haven’t encountered before.” Being a Wright devotee, I can second that opinion, and suggest Surprised by Hope, among others.
We would welcome your book suggestions and – even more – your book reviews on what you or your group have read. Please contact Richard at [email protected] to share your recommendations and submit a short review.
From the Paulist Associates Handbook:
“Paulist Associates find opportunities in their daily lives, through their various vocations, to exemplify the mission commitments of the Paulists in the charism of Fr. Isaac Hecker. His charism specified that, in modern American/Canadian culture, the Holy Spirit was at work, making it conducive to invite people to faith, and helping the Church understand its role in modern, democratic societies. His charism was marked by openness to others and a particular welcome to outsiders.”
In the months ahead, we’d like to ask you to share ways in which you live that model in your daily lives, in your families, in your parishes or schools…any way that you bring the Paulist charism to the wider world.
Submissions of any length are welcome. And pictures are a great addition.
Email them to Denis Hurley at [email protected].
Thank you.
— Denis Hurley, Editor
Submitted by Frank Trogus and Francie Dix, on behalf of the Horseshoe Bay Associates
L. Come Holy Spirit
R. Fill the Hearts of your faithful and enkindle in them the fire of your love.
L. Send forth your Spirit and they shall be created.
R. And you shall renew the face of the earth
L. O God, who by the light of the Holy Spirit instructed the hearts of the faithful, grant that by the same Spirit we may know what is right and always rejoice in his consolation, through Christ our Lord.
R. Amen.
The questions Isaac Hecker grappled with during his conversion journey were few. But they were the most profound questions we experience as Christians. At the core of his questions, he found a deep experience with the Holy Spirit. What was at the center of this restless soul? What was expected of him? How was he to find answers to the hurdles on his faith journey? Insight from his diary offers us a glimpse into the angst he experienced on this path. The mystic in him helped clarify the questions he was asking but often led to more questions at a much more profound level. At the center of his mystical experience was God, led there by the Holy Spirit. He ultimately found a tool in the Roman Catholic Church that would aid and support his quest the rest of his life. Read these passages as if in his footsteps with a solemn, contemplative mind.
From Chapter 1 Before Conversion
June 12. 1843. – At times I have an impulse to cry out, “What wouldst Thou have me to do?” I would shout up into the empty vault of heaven: “Ah, why plaguest Thou me so? What shall I do? Give me an answer unless Thou wilt have me consumed by inward fire, drying up the living liquid of life. Wouldst Thou have me to give up all? I have. I have no dreams to realize. I want nothing, have nothing, and am willing to die in any way. What ties I have are few and can be cut with a groan.”
October 18, 1843. – I feel this afternoon a deep want in my soul unsatisfied by my circumstances here, the same as I experienced last winter when I was led from this place. It is at the very depth of my being. Ah, it is deeply stirred! Oh, could I utter the aching void I feel within! Could I know what would fill it! Alas! Nothing that can be said—no, nothing can—touch the aching spot. In silence I must remain and let it ache. I would cover myself with darkness and hide my face from the light. Oh, could I but call upon the Lord! Could I but say, Father! Could I feel any relationship!
[New York] March 8 [1844]. – My life is becoming more practical. I am now much occupied in my mind regarding my position and purpose in life so far as any seems to have been given to me.* * * I am here now in body but not in spirit. The greater part of my true life is lost in my present position. Thoughts, feelings, and study which would occupy my mind if I had my own course, so far as my time is [now] occupied with them, are so almost by stealth. I am neither living in the business nor am I making much progress in my studies. In this case I do not benefit others, nor do I see that I am much benefited. This should change. One of the two must cease as an object. The first has not been, nor is now, nor does it seem possible for it to be, ever my aim in life. What then shall I do? And how shall the end in view be accomplished?
One great difficulty seems to be this: I cannot place any definite purpose before my mind and bend all my energies to its accomplishment. I am willing to be true, submissive, self-denying, self-sacrificing for the spirit of my nature, but—
March 10th. – At the above line I was called away. Since the above I have made up my decision of giving up my life, my time, to study for the field of the Church. …
[Concord, Mass.] June 6 [1844]. – My whole heart these two days past feels like one fresh wound.
What would the Spirit have me to do? to say? It seems to give me no rest.
My studies are pursued with the same spirit in which they were commenced, and there seems to me no reason to fear but that they will be continued by the same for some time to come. However, this I would affirm the same as has been affirmed by me for these two years back; the only consistency that I can promise is submission to the Spirit which is guiding me, whatever may be the external appearance or superficial consequences to others. Of no other consistency am I aware but unconditional surrender and reliance on the guidance of God. The entire co- operation of our will with His will. Our truthfulness consists not in following our own path but the path He marks out for us, be it a path of rocks and thorns or one of flowers and pleasantness.
June 11, 1844. – [Hecker’s Conversion to Catholicism]. This morning [Tuesday] I returned from Boston having gone there on Saturday to see Bishop Fenwick of the R.C. Church. I saw the bishop and his coadjutor Fitzpatrick. The latter I spent some time with yesterday afternoon and inquired particularly as to the preliminary steps in entering the RC Church. My mind is made up to join the C. Church, and this soon….
My highest convictions, my deepest wants, lead me there and should I not obey them? This permits no room to harbor a doubt in. My friends will look upon it with astonishment and probably use the common epithets—delusion, fanaticism, and blindness—but so I wish it to appear to minds. As they are otherwise to me, this would not be satisfactory. Men call that superstition that they have not the feeling to appreciate and that fanaticism that they have not the spiritual perception to perceive.
June 11, 1844. – This is a heavy task; it is a great undertaking; a serious, sacred, sincere, and solemn step; it is the most vital and eternal act, and as such do I feel it in all its importance, weight, and power. O God! Thou who hast led me by Thy heavenly messengers, by Thy divine grace, to make this new, unforeseen, and religious act of duty, support me in the day of trial. Support me, O Lord, in my confessions; give me strength and purity to speak freely the whole truth without any equivocation or attempt at justification. O Lord, help Thy servant when he is feeble and would fall.
One thing that gives me much peace and joy is that all worldly inducements, all temptations toward self-gratification whatever, are in favor of the Anglican Church and in opposition to the Catholic Church. And on this account my conscience feels free from any unworthy motive in joining it. The Roman Catholic Church is the most despised, the poorest, and, according to the world, the least respectable of any; this on account of the class of foreigners of which it is chiefly composed in this country. In this respect it presents to me no difficulty of any sort, nor demands the least sacrifice. But the new relations in which it will place me, and the new duties which will be required of me, are strange to me, and hence I shall feel all their weight at once.
July 18, 1844. – Grace is the free gift of God. God being universal love will consequently give his grace to all those who will submit to the love conditions of his universal love.
The highest object of man’s earth existence is to be the same as Jesus, to submit to Christ, to yield to heaven. To labour for the redemption of man, the establishing of God’s kingdom upon earth.
Yield yourself to the absolute all embracing Love and let it act in, through, and with you in its own infinite loveful manner. Co-operate with it in all its loveful purposes, and this is your work and none other. He that seeks for a work will never find it, but he that submits himself to the Creator will always be at work.
Hecker was received into the Catholic Church August 2, 1844, by Bishop John McKloskey in St Patrick’s Church on Mott Street in New York. Since Hecker had been baptized in the Methodist Church as a child, the bishop administered the sacrament conditionally. Hecker would have been 24 at the time.
From Chapter 2 After Conversion
December 18, 1844 – This day I commence the 25th year of my conscious existence on this globe…
What called me into the new existence? What shall call me from it? And whither it will call? Is to me but questions spoken to the infinite silence around which gives back nothing but the echo. We realize not our birth nor do we our exit. At each extreme of Man the beginning and the end lies a mystery.
December 18, 1844 – [Reform and Self-reform] Until the reformer yields himself to the great Artiste to be formed, he cannot re-form others.
January 14, 1845 – [Holy Spirit Inspiration] The genius of religion is divine inspiration. The influence of the Church is divine excitement.
1. What was the deep, unsatisfied want in Hecker’s soul? What would fill this void?
a. What filled your soul during your conversion? What fills your soul now?
2. What did Hecker believe that God wanted from him?
a. What does God want from you?
3. What was the purpose of Hecker becoming Catholic?
a. What is the purpose of your Catholic journey?
4. How was Hecker going to fulfill his response to God’s wanting?
a. What do you do / can you do to fulfill your response to God?
5. What role did the Holy Spirit play in Hecker’s early life?
a. What role does the Holy Spirit play in your life?
Closing Prayer — A Prayer from St. Therese Lisieux
May today there be peace within.
May you trust God you are exactly where you are meant to be.
May you not forget the infinite possibilities that are born of faith.
May you use those gifts that you have received, and pass on the love that has been given to you.
May you be content knowing that you are a child of God
Let this presence settle into your bones, and allow your soul the freedom to sing, dance, praise, and love
It is there for each and every one of us.
Amen
(From a Facebook posting from Paulist Fr. Rich Andre, Austin)
PAULIST ASSOCIATES NATIONAL DIRECTOR
- Mike Kallock, C.S.P.
Paulist General Office, P.O. Box 20606, New York, NY 10023, [email protected]
BOARD MEMBERS
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- Richard Allegra, Diaspora Group, [email protected]
- Heather McClory, Toronto, Canada, [email protected]
- Fr. Frank Desiderio, C.S.P., [email protected]
- Fr. Joe Scott, C.S.P., [email protected]
ASSOCIATES WORLD STAFF
- Publisher: Fr. Mike Kallock, C.S.P.
- Editor: Denis M. Hurley
- Design Coordinator: Ellie Murphy
- Staff Writer: Richard Allegra
Heavenly Father, you called your servant Isaac Thomas Hecker to preach the Gospel to the people of North America and through his teaching, to know the peace and the power of your indwelling Spirit. He walked in the footsteps of Saint Paul the Apostle, and like Paul spoke your Word with a zeal for souls and a burning love for all who came to him in need.
Look upon us this day, with compassion and hope. Hear our prayer. We ask that through the intercession of Father Hecker your servant, you might grant us (state the request).
We ask this in the name of Jesus Christ, Your Son, Our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit. One God, forever and ever. Amen.
When you pray this prayer, and if you believe that you have received any favors through Hecker’s intercession, please contact the Office of the Cause for Canonization of Servant of God, Isaac Hecker at [email protected]. Visit paulist.org/hecker to learn more about his life and the cause for his canonization.
I believe that I am drawn by the Holy Spirit to the spirituality and qualities of the Paulist Community.
I have discerned both by prayer and study that God calls me to become associated with the Paulists.
I promise that I will pray for the works of the Paulist Society, meet with others, who are also members of the Paulist Associates, for spiritual sharing and formation; and I seek to embody the apostolic qualities of the Paulists in my daily life.
Attentive to the Holy Spirit and faithful to the example of St. Paul and the charism of Father Isaac Hecker, I commit myself for one year of membership in the Paulist Associates.