What follows is from a pocket diary, and from a letter home: 

“The work that Divine Providence has called us to do in our own country, were its spirit extended throughout Europe, would be the focus of new light and an element of regeneration.  Our country has a providential position in our century in relation to Europe, and our efforts to Catholicize and sanctify it give it an importance, in a religious aspect, of a most interesting and significant character.”

“I do not wish to cross the Atlantic ever again, and therefore would like to finish with Europe and Italy.  As for the notable men of the day, I have seen many of them—­enough of them.  My present experience in one way and another seems to have prepared me to lay a foundation for action which will be suitable not only for the present but for centuries to come.  No one of my previous convictions have been disturbed, but much strengthened and enlarged and settled.  I see nothing, practically, in which I am engaged, that, were it in my power, I would now wish to alter or abandon.  I shall return with the resolution to continue them with more confidence, more zeal, more energy.”

He arrived in New York in June, 1870.

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CHAPTER XXXII

THE LONG ILLNESS

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 will not be expected that we shall treat extensively of this subject; nor can one who writes in the beginning of the ’90s about the closing scenes of a life which ended late in the ’80s go very much into detail without bringing in the living.  As to Father Hecker’s latter days in this world, it may be said that his joy and courage and buoyancy of spirits, as well as his hopeful outlook upon men and things, were all tried in the furnace of extreme bodily suffering as well as of the most excruciating mental agony.

Four distinct epochs divide Father Hecker’s life:  one when in early days he was driven from home and business and ultimately into the Church by aspirations towards a higher life; another marks the extraordinary dealings of God with his soul during his novitiate and time of studies; the third was the struggle in Rome which produced the Paulist community; the fourth and last was the illness which we are now to consider.  The closing scenes of his life are scattered over more than sixteen years, filled with almost every form of pain of body and darkness of soul.