The year spent in England after ordination was occupied by Father Hecker mainly in parochial duties at Clapham and some neighboring stations attended by the Redemptorists of that house.  Father Walworth enjoyed some missionary experience with Fathers Pecherine and Buggenoms, but Father Hecker had only been at one or two small retreats—­one at Scott-Murray’s estate in company with Father Ludwig and another at that of Weld-Blundells in Lancashire; but in neither of these had he preached or given any instructions, serving only in the confessional and in hunting up obstinate sinners.  He certainly did preach once before leaving England, perhaps only once, and that was at Great Marlowe, near London, in the church built by the Hornihold family.  It was on Easter Sunday, 1850, and was well remembered by Father Hecker and referred to in after years.  He thought the sermon a good one as a beginning, but it seems to have given him no encouragement, and we venture to think that if it profited his hearers somewhat it also amused them a little.  He needed a teacher, and he found one in Father Bernard, the newly appointed provincial of the American province.

In 1850 Father Bernard Joseph Hafkenscheid* was made Provincial of the Redemptorist houses in America.  His patronymic was too formidable for ordinary use, and he was universally known as Father Bernard.  He was in the prime of life on taking this office, and although he had spent twenty years on the missions in Holland, his native country, in Belgium and England, he yet showed no signs of these labors; he continued them for fourteen years longer, for the most of the time in the Netherlands, his death resulting from accident in 1865.  By common consent he is ranked in the highest order of popular preachers.  He had entered the community from the secular priesthood shortly after his ordination; he had made a brilliant course of studies at Rome, which was crowned by the doctorate of the Roman College.  He was physically a tall, powerful man, and of majestic bearing.  His features were full of intelligence, his glance penetrating, his voice clear, sympathetic, and vibrating, his gestures expressive.  If half that is handed down of Father Bernard be true, he was a wonderful preacher of penance and of hope, his high gifts of natural eloquence served by a perfect education and inspired by a most enthusiastic love of the people.

[* The reader is referred to his life by Canon Claessens (Catholic Publication Society Co.) It is all too brief, yet is a good summary of the career of the great Redemptorist missionary, one of St. Alphonsus’ noblest sons.]