The following anecdote of his missionary days shows Father Hecker’s contempt for lazy devotion.  Once, when upon a mission, a young priest just returned home from Rome, where he had made his studies, expressed his desire to get back again to Italy as soon as possible, saying, “I find no time here to pray.”  Father Hecker felt indignant, for it did not seem to him that the young man was very much occupied.  “Don’t be such a baby,” said he.  “Look around and see how much work there is to be done here.  Is it not better to make some return to God—­here in your own country—­for what He has done for you, rather than to be sucking your thumbs abroad?  What kind of piety do you call that?”

He took a personal interest in all the members of the community, and this was greatly heightened if any one fell sick.  We remember his excitement when it was announced that one of the Fathers, who had been sent to a hospital for a surgical operation, had grown worse and was in danger of death.  He began to pace his room, to question sharply about doctors and nurses, and immediately ordered Masses to be said and special prayers by the community; and this father he had seen very little of and hardly knew from the others.  “I cannot tell,” he wrote to a friend at the time of Father Tillotson’s illness, “I dare not express, how much I love him, what he is to me.”  Always tender-hearted, the nearer he came to the end and the more he suffered the more gentle were his feelings towards all, the more kindly grew his looks, but also the more sad and weary.  He was always careful to express thanks for favors, small or great.  The following is from a letter to a friend: 

“Your last note contained at the end a kind invitation.  Don’t be troubled; I’m not coming!  Do you know that sometimes I am tempted to think that I am necessary?  Sometimes the thought has come to me that I might run away from home a week or so.  Then I have driven the thought away as I would a temptation.  But I wished to thank you none the less for your invitation, though I should never see you again. I have an uncontrollable horror of ingratitude."

During his long years of illness Father Hecker’s reading continued upon the lines he had ever followed, the Scriptures holding, of course, the first place.  Besides reading or having read to him certain parts adapted to the spiritual probation he was undergoing, such as Job, the Passion of our Lord, and chapters of the sapiential books, he also took the entire Scriptures in course, going slowly through them from cover to cover and insisting on every word being read, genealogies and all.  He would sometimes interrupt the reader to make comments and ask questions.  The last words that he listened to at night were the words of Scripture, read to him after he had got into bed.  He declared that they soothed him and settled his mind and calmed its disturbance, and this was easily seen by his looks and manner.  Some who knew him well thought from his comments that God gave him infused knowledge of a rare order about the sense of Scripture.  Once he said: