Yours most truly,
J. H. N.

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RECOLLECTIONS OF FATHER HECKER BY THE ABBE XAVIER DUFRESNE, OF GENEVA

I

I first knew Father Hecker in 1873, meeting him at a Catholic Congress held at Ferney and presided over by Monsignor Mermillod.  Father Hecker visited Geneva several times after that, living in the closest intimacy with our family.  He spent several weeks on a visit with my father, Dr. Dufresne, at a chalet situated on Salane mountain above Geneva, being at the time in feeble health and seeking recovery by a prolonged sojourn in Europe.  For this enforced inactivity he recompensed himself by continual and earnest conversations, for the purpose of gaining to his ideas all whom he believed capable of understanding them, whether Protestants or Catholics.  There was about him an indescribable charm which mysteriously drew one to him and penetrated one with his influence.  Although he did not know French thoroughly and preferred to use English, yet he spoke with such power, elevation, exuberance, and depth of thought that he captivated his hearers.

When I made Father Hecker’s acquaintance I had just lost my eyesight, being at the end of my ecclesiastical studies, and not yet ordained.  He did my soul much good by teaching me a kind of holiness which was joined to lively intelligence and the most energetic activity.  Father Hecker remains to me not only the type of an American priest, but of the modern one, the kind needed by the Church for the recovery of the ground lost as a result of Protestantism and infidelity, as well as to enable her to start anew in her divine mission.

II

The principal impression produced by Father Hecker on those who came in contact with him was one of sanctity.  In his company one felt his whole being influenced as if by something venerable and supernatural, and a constant inclination to correspond to the action of the Holy Spirit and submit the human will to the divine.  In conversing with him about spiritual things one was transported into a higher region, the heart growing warmer and the conscience more sensitive.  Father Hecker plainly inclined by habit to the type of character given us by Jesus Christ.  He suffered much, both physically from weakness of nerves and morally on account of enforced inactivity, yet he not only never complained but was always cheerful.  This was the greater merit in him because he seemed by nature impatient of opposition and contradiction.  He had a sagacious mind and easily discovered the faults of others, but, although he spoke of men and affairs with openness and candor, he yet ever sought for favorable interpretations.  Like St. Francis de Sales, he knew how to judge of people and yet remain full of charity for his neighbor.  Profoundly individual, and profoundly attached to his ideas, like all Anglo-Saxons, and in fact like all who have acquired the Protestant habit of free inquiry, he nevertheless had for the Church a docility almost naive and infantile; and this was because he recognized in her the authority and the action of the Holy Spirit.