Life of Father Hecker

THE events which led to the separation of the band of American missionaries from the Redemptorist community took place in the spring and summer of 1857. A misunderstanding arose...

HAVING given in the preceding chapter Father Hecker's principles of the religious life in community, a more general view of his spiritual doctrine, as well as of his method of t...

WE have now arrived at the last period of Father Hecker's life, the long illness which completed his meed of suffering and of merit, and gradually drew him down to the grave. It...

"I WOULD not have become a priest had I lived in Europe, for I never had or could have any strong attrait for sacerdotal functions. But I felt that the Church in America was in...

WHAT influenced Isaac Hecker to leave Brook Farm, a place so congenial in many ways to his natural dispositions, was, plainly enough, his tendency to seek a more ascetic and int...

FATHER HECKER'S prayer during all these years was a state of what seemed almost uninterrupted contemplation of varied intensity. He attended the evening meditation of the commun...

THE day after the taking of the vows, Brothers Hecker and Walworth started by stage-coach for the house of studies, at Wittem in Dutch Limburg. The route lay nearly east through...

THE suspension of the missions, if it was the result of necessity, was yet an aid to Father Hecker in devoting himself to public speaking in the interests of the Catholic faith....

ONE Sunday forenoon, happening to cross Broadway near a fashionable Protestant church, we saw the curb on both sides of the street lined with carriages, and the coachmen and foo...

A BRIEF consideration at this point of a certain permanent tendency of Father Hecker's mind will be of present and future value to the student of his life. It has been said alre...

It has been said already, in speaking of Father Hecker's childhood, that he had been consciously under the influence of supernatural impressions from a very early period. It see...

THE beginnings of the Paulist community having been sketched, it is now in order to state the principles with which Father Hecker, guided no less by supernatural intuition than...

THE famous though short-lived community at West Roxbury, Massachusetts, where Isaac Hecker made his first trial of the common life, was started in the spring of 1841 by George R...

TOWARDS the close of the eighteenth century a German clockmaker named Engel Freund, accompanied by his wife and children, left his native town of Elberfeld, in Rhenish Prussia,...

IT was the middle of August, 1843, when Isaac Hecker once more took up his residence with his family in New York. His first endeavor was to sink back again as far as possible in...

THE Redemptorist novitiate at St. Trond, as well as the house of studies at Wittem, Holland, had been established be the immediate disciples of St. Clement Hofbauer. That great...

THE earliest of the letters so fortunately preserved by the affection of Isaac Hecker's kindred is addressed to his mother, from Chelsea, and bears date December 24, 1842. After...

FROM Worcester Isaac went on to New York, stopping on the way to make a brief visit to the Fourierite community in New Jersey, known as the North American Phalanx. He probably h...

BEFORE summarizing and conveniently arranging Isaac Hecker's reasons for becoming a Catholic and narrating the accompanying incidents, we give the following profession of faith...

Upon this aspiration as a background the whole matter of Isaac Hecker's vocation must be considered. In substance we have met with it very frequently already; in the shape just...

THE private journals from which we are about to quote so largely were an unhoped-for addition to the stock of materials available for Father Hecker's biography. Until after his...

"I LOOK back," wrote Father Hecker in the summer of 1879, "on these three years as one continuous and dreadful interior struggle." This shows that the shadows were too deep and...

IN 1867 Father Hecker visited Europe in company with Father Hewit for the purpose of opening business relations between The Catholic Publication Society and English, Irish, and...

HAD Protestantism possessed anything capable of attracting Isaac Hecker he would certainly have found it, for he made due and diligent search. He was, in a manner, bound to do s...

THE citations thus far made from Isaac Hecker's youthful diary, although penned at Brook Farm, bear few traces of that fact. They might have been written in a desert for all evi...

These words are part of a long prayer written by Isaac Hecker in his diary April 23, 1844, after his arrival at Concord, Mass. He appears to have gone directly there from Carlis...

WHILE in Europe God opened Father Hecker's soul to the cries of the nations. He was profoundly interested in the state of religion there, and the persecutions suffered by Cathol...

THE first Bishop of Boston, John Louis de Cheverus, who left that diocese to become successively the Bishop of Montauban and the Cardinal-Archbishop of Bordeaux, was, in the str...

THE first effect of Brownson's letter was to throw its recipient into a state of great though brief perplexity. That final struggle, strange and painful, in which the soul for t...

DURING the seven months of Father Hecker's stay in Rome the band of American missionaries were busily occupied. Missions were given in the following order: Newark, N.J.; Poughke...

ISAAC HECKER'S zeal for social reform lent force to his strictly personal cravings for a more religious life; he longed for wider scope than individual effort could possibly bes...

"When I cast my eyes back, it seems to me that I have made some progress--that I have grown somewhat better than I was. Thoughts, feelings, and passions which were active in my...

BISHOP McCLOSKEY, afterwards the first American Cardinal, was coadjutor to Bishop Hughes from 1844 to 1847. He was living at the old Cathedral when Isaac Hecker first called upo...

NOT finding any solution of his spiritual difficulties at either Fruitlands or Brook Farm, Isaac Hecker turned his face once more toward the home from which he had departed near...

IN serving the parish, the Paulists, led by Father Hecker, endeavored to utilize the individual qualities of each member, as well as the advantages of a community, so as to brin...