panted to hear the word of Divine command; he never moved at any other.  But when the voice of God bade him forward he never flinched at any obstacle.  The ever-recurring persuasion that there were so few who saw God’s will as he saw it cut him to the heart, and the mystery of the Divine times and moments grew upon him with fatal force till the end, until he drooped and pined away with grief that he could but taste the first-fruits.  Yet he was ever submissive to the Divine Will, to live, to die, to begin, to end the work, to be alone or to be of many brethren, to lead or to follow.  Though a most active spirit, he was yet contemplative, and to unite the manifestation of the Holy Spirit in the inner and outer life was the end he always kept in view; but he was distinctively an interior man.

Few men since the Apostles have felt a quicker pulse than Isaac Hecker when the name of God was heard, or that of Jesus Christ or the Holy Spirit.  Few men have had a nobler pride in the Church of Christ, or felt more one with her honor.  Few men have grown into closer kinship with all the family of God, from Mary the great mother and the holy angels down to the simplest Catholic, than Isaac Hecker.  But his peculiar trait was fidelity to the inner voice.  “There are some,” he once said, “for whom the predominant influence is the external one, authority, example, etc.; others in whose lives the interior action of the Holy Spirit predominates.  In my case, from my childhood, God influenced me by an interior light and by the interior touch of his Holy Spirit.”  The desperate demand of Philip, “Lord, show us the Father and it is enough,” was Father Hecker’s cry all through early life.  After the founding of his community, in 1858, his life was like an arctic year.  From that date till 1872 there was no set of sun.  The unclouded heavens bent over him ever smiling with God’s glorious light; and its golden tints lit up all humanity with hope and joy.  Then the sun went down to rise no more.  The heavens were dark and silent, or rent asunder with wrathful storms, only a transient flash of the aurora relieving the gloom.  When the light dawned again it was to beam upon his soul in the ecstasies of Paradise.

We know not what to say of his faults, nor can we think that he had any that were not to be traced to his eager love of God’s cause, such as his overpowering men with pleading for God in their souls; or too easily crediting unworthy men who prated to him of liberty and the Holy Spirit; or over-fondness during his illness for playing in the lists of fancy at an apostolate denied him in the battle of active life; he repined at being forced to plan great battles in a sick-room.  He could not help betraying a heart heaving with a pent-up ocean of zeal, while he was creeping about helplessly, often too feeble to speak above his breath.  A lover of liberty, its only boon to him at last was liberty to accept and rivet upon himself the chain of patient love.