Your youngest son has been ordained priest in God's one, holy, Catholic Church, and prays for you daily when he offers up to God the precious body and blood of His beloved Son, our Lord; and besides you have received, by the marriage of another of your sons [George], a new daughter, who, being also a child of the Holy Church, must be kind, dutiful, pious, fearing God, and loving above all things our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.

Are not these, dear mother, blessings?
Do they not convey to your heart joy and consolation?
They ought and surely do.

Your latter days dear mother, will be your happiest." The remainder of the letter is filled with exhortations to enter the Church, and arguments drawn from Scripture.
We may mention a letter written to Father Hecker by Father Heilig on the eve of the former's departure for America; a message full of affectionate good wishes and claims of friendship and union in prayer with the singular young pilgrim from the Western World.
The following extracts from the memoranda may be of interest as embodying Father Hecker's views of how to study divinity, resulting from his own experience in preparing for the priesthood: "March, 1884 .-- I told Father Hecker, in course of conversation, about my reading the life of the Cure of Ars.

He said: 'A saintly man indeed, and one gifted with a supernatural character to an extraordinary degree.

But it seems to me that his biographer misunderstood him somewhat.