Suffering: A Hecker Reflection

September 3, 2012

This is the eighteenth in a series of previously unpublished reflections from the 1854 spiritual notebook of Paulist Founder, Servant of God Father Isaac T. Hecker. The reflection series is being made pubic in conjunction with Father Hecker’s cause for canonization. Father Paul Robichaud, CSP, Paulist historian and postulator for Father Hecker’s cause for sainthood, offers a response to Father Hecker’s reflection.

 

Suffering

We have all eternity to enjoy, but only a few moments to suffer, to testify to our sincere and ardent love for our crucified Saviour and our God.

The disciple is not greater than the Master. The one who has no cross is no follower of the crucified. It would be a miracle to find a Christian without a cross, except in heaven. If you avoid your cross or are unwilling to take it up and follow Jesus, you are not worthy to be a disciple.

Our destiny here on earth is this: to conquer the world and ourselves by suffering in imitation of Jesus Christ in order that we might be eternally happy with him forever. The only true success in this life comes from following Jesus Christ. If we for a moment seek success elsewhere, it matters not how high or useful it may appear to us, we are deceived and we live and act in vain for Jesus Christ is the only Way, the whole Truth and the true Life. Therefore we walk astray when we act without Jesus.

 

A Response from Father Paul Robichaud, CSP

Father Hecker had survived a smallpox epidemic as a child which had both weakened his eyesight and had left some scarring on his lower face. The scars and his eyeglasses were constant companions. Yet despite these remnants of his childhood, Father Hecker in 1854 was in the best of health and apparently had plenty of energy to channel into his hopes for the developing Catholic Church in America. He had no idea that some 20 years later he would struggle with leukemia and that the disease would drain his energy and obstruct his writing and teaching. Father Hecker experienced personal suffering at different stages of his life from infancy to old age.

Suffering occurs as either emotional or physical suffering. Sometimes it takes both forms. While it may mark some of the most difficult moments of our lives, it also represents some of the most important. When we suffer, we experience the basic conflicts present in our lives, which force us to honestly confront them. When we suffer and come through these moments, we realize how much inner strength we have and it gives us the confidence to face the other challenges of our lives. The reverse is true. When we deny our suffering or seek to escape from suffering, we generally make matters far worse than they were.

Father Hecker says three things about suffering. (1) It would be a miracle to find a Christian without a cross, except in heaven. Everyone suffers whether they admit it or not, it’s a part of life and because of the suffering of Jesus, our suffering is a part of Christian discipleship. (2) We have all eternity to enjoy, but only a few moments to suffer. No matter how bad we think our suffering is, it does not last – it comes to an end. We lose a job and eventually we find another. We fall in love only to have the relationship fall apart and eventually we fall in love again. Suffering at the time seems to go on forever, but suffering does not last. (3) Our destiny here on earth is this: to conquer the world and ourselves by suffering in imitation of Jesus Christ in order that we might be eternally happy with him forever. When our suffering is grounded in the suffering of Jesus, we find meaning and context; for in Jesus suffering becomes redemptive. When we context our suffering in that of Jesus, we gain perspective. As the brothers and sisters of Jesus, our suffering becomes a part of his suffering, and through his suffering God has chosen to redeem the world.

 

About Father Isaac Hecker’s 1854 Spiritual Notebook:

Servant of God, Father Isaac Hecker wrote these spiritual notes as a young Redemptorist priest about 1854 and they have never been published. Hecker was 34 years old at the time, and had been ordained a priest for five years. He loved his work as a Catholic evangelist. The Redemptorist mission band had expanded out of the New York state area to the south and west, and the band’s national reputation grew. Hecker had begun to focus his attention on Protestants who came out to hear them. To this purpose Hecker began to write in 1854 his invitation to Protestant America to consider the Catholic Church, “Questions of the Soul” which would make him a national figure in the American church.

Hecker collected and organized these notes that include writings and stories from St. Alphonsus Liguori, the Jesuit spiritual writer Louis Lallemant and his disciple Jean Surin, the German mystic John Tauler, St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Jane de Chantal among others. These notes were a resource for retreat work and spiritual direction and show Hecker’s growing proficiency in traditional Catholic spirituality some ten years after his conversion to the Catholic faith. They are composed of short thematic reflections.

This is the eighteenth in a series of previously unpublished reflections from the 1854 spiritual notebook of Paulist Founder, Servant of God Father Isaac T. Hecker. The reflection series is being made pubic in conjunction with Father Hecker’s cause for canonization. Father Paul Robichaud, CSP, Paulist historian and postulator for Father Hecker’s cause for sainthood, offers a response to Father Hecker’s reflection.