Thought for the Day – 29 January – Meditations on the Hidden Life: From the 1906 Edition of The Heart of Jesus of Nazareth; it has the Imprimatur of Bishop John Baptist Butt, Diocese of Southwark, England, 5 February 1890. Author’s name known simply as Author of “The Voice of the Sacred Heart.”
(We return to Fr Clarke for February with his Meditations on The Great Truths.)
Meditation 5, PART TWO:
The Happiness of the Heart of Jesus in the Hidden Life
The example of our Lord, as far as He is imitable for us, was needed in this respect, for two reasons.
Firsly, in order to teach us how it is that the beautiful Works of God, maybe for us, a means of raising our souls to God Himself and, of enlarging our hearts with love of Him and secondly, as a condemnation of that false spirituality which would make indifference to the beautiful in the Works of God, an evidence of advanced sanctity.
Better inspired have been those numerous Saints to whose pure hearts, a lovely flower or some fair scene of earth, has revealed the Eternal Beauty, for the full and unveiled possession of whom their pure and free souls were panting.
The love of the Father ,was that all-absorbing impulse, in the Heart of Jesus which, in the heart of a simple creature, would have taken the form of a passion. What other result could come from this, than that every mark of the Father’s Handiwork should flood His Soul with joy?
So it will be with us. In proportion to our purity of heart and our love of God, will be our capacity for a spiritual appreciation of the beautiful Works which are but emanations from Himself.
If the Heart of our Divine Lord found such well-springs of happiness in the contemplation of those Works in the natural order which were, to His Eye, revelations, or rather the abiding Presence of the Eternal Beauty, Wisdom, Love and other attributes, what shall be said of its complacency in those of the order of grace? We are about to meditate on the complacency of the Heart of Jesus, as reflected in that of His ever Immaculate Mother.
As He regarded that Mother’s face, He saw the beauty of the spotless soul reflected therein and His Heart rejoiced in that masterpiece of spiritual loveliness, in the consideration of that singular privilege which elevated her, so far above all other creatures. He rejoiced, moreover, in her other special prerogative – her Divine Maternity. The memory of that word, by which she had consented to become His Mother and thus, the sharer of His sorrows and His helper in the Work of man’s Redemption, made sweet melody to His Heart as He watched her moving reverently before Him, in her lowly occupations. But, above all, He rejoiced in her sublime humility, by which, ascribing to God alone every grace she had received and desiring to employ them but for His glory, she rendered that homage to His sovereignty, of which so many of His creatures defraud Him. Jesus, then, in the House of Nazareth, is our first great Exemplar of devotion to His ever Blessed Mother and of the consolation which those possess who truly love her.
But He opens for us, in His Hidden Life, another source of consolation and happiness. He would teach us how to sanctify the strongest of human ties and that, nothing more purifies the soul, than the tender, reverential love of a child for his mother.
This is a tie, surpassing every other in the order of nature, in intimacy, in strength, in beautiful associations. Those who have grown hardened in sin, have been reclaimed by vividly recalling, to their world-worn minds, some long-forgotten memory of the mother, whose heart perhaps they had broken.
Jesus has sanctified forever, this filial tie and whilst revealing to us, in His love for His Own Blessed Mother, one of the sources of happiness to His Sacred Heart, He becomes our Model, not only of devotion to her but too, of the reverential love with which we should regard our human mother.
In the evil days through which we pass, the beneficial effect of so hallowing an influence over the hearts, not only of the very young but also, of those on whom the world has put forth its noxious breath, would be incalculable.
There are, again, those who seem imbued with the false notion that piety, is incompatible with human enjoyment and hence, as we have shown before that, the enjoyment of human things is incompatible with sanctity. Our Lord has disabused us of this error and, by example, taken from His Sacred Heart, has taught, to those at least who know how to penetrate its depths that, its spirit is sweet, sanctifying what is human and elevating it into being, in part, Divine!
AnaStpaul 
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