Life of Father Hecker | Page 5

leading Catholic layman of
France, De Mun, kneeling in spiritual retreat when their presence is
required in front of the enemy. The Catholic of the nineteenth century
all over the world is too quiet, too easily resigned to "the will of God,"

attributing to God the effects of his own timidity and indolence. Father
Hecker rolled up his sleeves and "pitched in" with desperate resolve.
He fought as for very life. Meet him anywhere or at any time, he was at
work or he was planning to work. He was ever looking around to see
what might be done. He did with a rush the hard labor of a missionary
and of a pastor, and he went beyond it into untrodden pathways. He
hated routine. He minded not what others had been doing, seeking only
what he himself might do. His efforts for the diffusion of Catholic
literature, THE CATHOLIC WORLD, his several books, the Catholic
tracts, tell his zeal and energy. A Catholic daily paper was a favorite
design to which he gave no small measure of time and labor. He
anticipated by many years the battlings of our temperance apostles. The
Paulist pulpit opened death-dealing batteries upon the saloon when the
saloon-keeper was the hero in state and church. The Catholic
University of America found in him one of its warmest advocates. His
zeal was as broad as St. Paul's, and whoever did good was his friend
and received his support. The walls of his parish, or his order, did not
circumscribe for him God's Church. His choice of a patron saint--St.
Paul--reveals the fire burning within his soul. He would not, he could
not be idle. On his sick-bed, where he lay the greater part of his latter
years, he was not inactive. He wrote valuable articles and books, and
when unable to write, he dictated.
He was enthusiastic in his work, as all are who put their whole soul into
what they are doing. Such people have no time to count the dark linings
of the silvery clouds; they realize that God and man together do not fail.
Enthusiasm begets enthusiasm. It fits a man to be a leader; it secures a
following. A bishop who was present at the Second Plenary Council of
Baltimore has told me that when Father Hecker appeared before the
assembled prelates and theologians in advocacy of Catholic literature as
a missionary force, the picture was inspiring, and that the hearers,
receiving a Pentecostal fire within their bosoms, felt as if America were
to be at once converted. So would it have been if there had been in
America a sufficient number of Heckers. He had his critics. Who ever
tries to do something outside routine lines against whom hands are not
raised and whose motives and acts are not misconstrued? A venerable
clergyman one day thought he had scored a great point against Father

Hecker by jocosely suggesting to him as the motto of his new order the
word "Paulatim." The same one, no doubt, would have made a like
suggestion to the Apostle of the Gentiles. Advocates of "Paulatim"
methods have too often left the wheels of Christ's chariot fast in the
mire. We rejoice, for its sake, that enthusiasts sometimes appear on the
scene. The missions of the early Paulists, into which went Father
Hecker's entire heart, aroused the country. To-day, after a lapse of
thirty or thirty-five years, they are remembered as events wherever they
were preached.
His was the profound conviction that, in the present age at any rate, the
order of the day should be individual action--every man doing his full
duty, and waiting for no one else to prompt him. This, I take it, was
largely the meaning of Father Hecker's oft-repeated teaching on the
work of the Holy Ghost in souls. There have been epochs in history
where the Church, sacrificing her outposts and the ranks of her
skirmishers to the preservation of her central and vital fortresses, put
the brakes, through necessity, from the nature of the warfare waged
against her, upon individual activity, and moved her soldiers in serried
masses; and then it was the part and the glory of each one to move with
the column. The need of repression has passed away. The authority of
the Church and of her Supreme Head is beyond danger of being denied
or obscured, and each Christian soldier may take to the field, obeying
the breathings of the Spirit of truth and piety within him, feeling that
what he may do he should do. There is work for individual priests, and
for individual laymen, and so soon as it is discovered let it be done. The
responsibility is upon each one; the indifference of others is no excuse.
Said Father Hecker one day to a