“March, 1884.—­I told Father Hecker, in course of conversation, about my reading the life of the Cure of Ars.  He said:  ’A saintly man indeed, and one gifted with a supernatural character to an extraordinary degree.  But it seems to me that his biographer misunderstood him somewhat.  He seems to admit that the Cure of Ars had a naturally stupid mind, because he had so much difficulty in getting through his studies for the priesthood.  The truth, probably, was that just at that time the supernatural action of the Holy Spirit came upon him and incapacitated him for his studies.  But everything about his after life shows that, though a rustic man, he had a good mind, a keen native wit, quick and clear perception.  I had something the same difficulty myself.

“During my novitiate and studies one of my great troubles was the relation between infused knowledge and acquired knowledge; how much one’s education should be by prayer and how much by study; the relation between the Holy Ghost and professors.

“In the novitiate they were all too much on the passive side—­ unbroken devotional and ascetic routine.  In the studentate, too much on the active side—­leaving nothing for infused science and prayer as a part of the method of study.  They soon broke me down.  I told them so.  If I went on studying I would have been driven mad.  Let me alone, I said.  Let me take my own way and I will warrant that I will know enough to be ordained when the time comes.  They said I was a scandal.  Then they sent me to England to De Held.  I am persuaded that in the study of divinity not enough room is given to prayer and not enough account made of infused science.”

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CHAPTER XXIII

A REDEMPTORIST MISSIONARY

“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 need of all the help that could be given by her children for the work of the priesthood.”  Father Hecker said this when near his end, and a full knowledge of his character bore him out in it.  The sacerdotal, the ecclesiastical, were qualities which he had assumed with full consciousness of their sanctity, yet they united with his other characteristics in a way to leave traces of the point of contact.  He was certainly an edifying priest, and to hear his Mass was to be spiritually elevated by his joyous fervor.  But you would never say of him “he is a thorough ecclesiastic, he is a typical priest.”  The external aids of religion he imparted with a reverence which displayed his faith in his priestly character as a dispenser of the sacramental mysteries of God.  But the other mysteries of God which are hidden in his providential guidance of men, he could expound with the instinctive familiarity of a native gift; the voice of God in nature, in reason, and in conscience, and its response in revelation, he could elicit with a power and unction rarely met with.  He has left the following words on record:  “After my ordination the duties of the sacred ministry appeared to me most natural; the hearing of confessions and the direction of souls was as if it had been a thing practised from my childhood, and was a source of great consolation.”