To these innocent men and women the mediatorship of Christ should be made as distinct as possible, the elevation of the soul to divine union through the Incarnation brought out fully, and the redemption of man from sin and hell be included in it, and be absorbed by it.  Too many souls who have never sinned mortally fail to struggle for perfection, Father Hecker often said, because they never have heard any invitation but the call to repentance.  The positive side of Christianity is the Incarnation, which lifts all men of good-will, repentant and innocent alike, into participation with the Deity.  Father Hecker would talk by the hour of the need of bringing that view of our Lord’s mission most prominently forward, the idea of redemption applying to innocent souls only on account of original sin, and by sympathy with their brethren infected by actual sin.  And he would show that even hard sinners could often be brought to a good life more surely, and be enabled more certainly to persevere, by forcibly emphasizing the Incarnation and its benefits than by any other method.  Their blindness and selfishness hinder hard sinners from easily appreciating our Lord’s sufferings as borne on their account.  Father Hecker regretted that the idea of redemption was so often presented in a way to give the impression that atonement was the whole office of Christ.  There are many souls for whom access to Christ as Mediator was more in consonance with the truth than access to Him as Redeemer, Mediator in that case including Redeemer, rather than the Redeemer absorbing the idea of Mediator.  Redemption from original sin is, of course, necessary to the mediatorship of a fallen race.  But our Lord became Redeemer that he might be Mediator; he cleansed us from sin that he might lift us up to the Godhead; and in many souls Father Hecker knew that the process of cleansing began and ended with original sin and venial sins.  Such souls often go their lives long with no compelling stimulus to perfection, because they cannot apply to themselves the accusations of sin commonly put into the directions for beginners.

Much has been already said of the aids to perfection which Father Hecker perceived in a right use of the liberty and intelligence of our times.  He also insisted that the commercial and industrial features of our civilization were no obstacles to a high state of Christian perfection.

In a remarkable sermon, entitled “The Saint of Our Day,” published in the third volume of the Paulist series, Father Hecker, after making a powerful exposition of the advantages of liberty and intelligence as helps to the interior life, insists that the opportunities and responsibilities peculiar to our civilization are capable of being sanctified to the highest degree.  The model he proposes in this sermon is St. Joseph.  He was no martyr, yet showed a martyr’s fidelity by his trust in God.