Category: Meditations on the HIDDEN LIFE

Posted in CHRIST the WORD and WISDOM, Meditations on the HIDDEN LIFE, QUOTES on PRAYER, SACRED HEART REFLECTIONS, The LORD'S PRAYER

Thought for the Day – 31 January – Meditation 7, PART ONE: The Heart of Jesus in Prayer in the Hidden Life

Posted on by AnaStpaul

Thought for the Day – 31 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 7: PART ONE:
The Heart of Jesus in Prayer in the Hidden Life

Let us imagine we see Jesus kneeling in the little House of Nazareth, His Sacred Hands reverently clasped, His Eyes closed or raised to Heaven. We have before us the Incarnate God praying to His Eternal Father. It will then refresh our souls, to withdraw for a while, within the silence and solitude of the Holy House and, whilst we contemplate the scene with reverence, let us endeavour to penetrate the Heart of Him, Who is praying there.

So beautiful is the picture presented to our minds by the thought of Jesus in prayer, that truly it might suffice to rivet our inward eye and claim our adoring love, without the addition of any comment.

Let us regard Him as the Wisdom of the Father, the Eternal Son, kneeling there in silent contemplation of the Divine Majesty unveiled before Him, while He pours out the eternal love, the burning prayer which consumes His Sacred Heart.
The labour of the day is over and Jesus is now free to give Himself, unrestrainedly, to that holy exercise which has not ceased to be the occupation of His Soul amidst His daily toil. How profound is the mystery of that Divine communication which passes between the Eternal Father and the Eternal Son, between the human Heart of the Man-God and the Father, in Whose Bosom He had dweltB from all eternity.
Unchecked now by the external trammels to which, in His Incarnation He had made Himself subject, He could deliver Himself to the transports of His Love and taste, in His earthly exile, His old, His eternal delight of solitude with God.

But we must not forget that we are contemplating our Divine Model in prayer; for we are not to suppose, we have chosen One too exalted for our imitation. No, indeed, Jesus prays as one of us. It is in Him, a human Heart which throbs with love and desire and He teaches us eloquently how to pray and discloses qualities, with which our prayer should be endowed. He has formally constituted Himself our Master in prayer, as in all other things.
In His Public Life and in His Passion He has taught us even the very words in which we should present our petitions, or upon which they should be formed.

Posted in Meditations on the HIDDEN LIFE, QUOTES on the CHURCH, SACRED HEART REFLECTIONS

Thought for the Day – 30 January – Meditation 6: The Occupation of the Heart of Jesus in the Hidden Life

Posted on by AnaStpaul

Thought for the Day – 30 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 6:
The Occupation of the Heart of Jesus in the Hidden Life

We are not at present going to study. in detail. the holy occupations of the Heart of our Lord, reserving such study for future consideration in separate meditations.
We shall find that it affords much assistance, in familiarising us, with the character of the Sacred Heart, its love, its sufferings and its desires. It will enable us also to recognise how full of merit, how conducive to God’s glory and, how helpful to the world at large, is a hidden life, provided it be modelled on the Hidden Life of Jesus.

The exterior life of Nazareth was, as we know, made up of the most ordinary works, the most commonplace actions. During those long years, we find nothing apparently, in due proportion, to the sublime Mission which brought Him down from Heaven.
Yet, He was all the while negotiating the great affair of our Redemption, as truly as when we come to regard Him hanging on the Cross.
Let us penetrate into His Heart and we shall see that it was secretly consumed with Love in the Presence of the Majesty of God, His Father and, since true love is ever active, with what energy must not the Divine Flame have burnt, within that living Furnace of Charity?

It was from this inexhaustible source of Love that His every act emanated and, these have merited the redemption of ten thousand worlds and are pleading, our cause in Heaven. at this moment!

Behold ~ the first great Master of the Divine Apostleship. Behold ~ in Jesus of Nazareth, the first Apostle of Prayer! This was the occupation of His Sacred Heart.
He loved, He adored, He repaired, He prayed, He immolated Himself for the Father’s glory, for the salvation of the universe.
He traced out the Divine plan of His Church, according to the eternal design He had seen in the bosom of the Father and, as each stratagem of His enemy for the defeat of that plan and the overthrow of His Church passed before Him, He devised the infallible means by which the evil influence should be counteracted and, the cause of good, should triumph.

Of what importance was it that the Hands of Jesus did but plane wood in a carpenter’s shop whilst His Heart was thus incessantly and divinely occupied? Could there really be monotony in such a Life as this? Whatever may have been its exterior, the interior of that Life was the most sublime which can be imagined.

Sublime also is the hidden life of those who have learnt to imitate Him, whose hearts, like His, are wholly occupied, as far as they can be in this life, with the interests of God and of souls; a life indeed which the wise ones of this world despise – which materialists scorn as useless. But in the great day of revelation, they will be forced to exclaim: “We fools esteemed their life madness and their end without honour; behold how they are numbered among the children of God and their lot is among the Saints.”

Posted in MARIAN QUOTES, MARIAN REFLECTIONS, Meditations on the HIDDEN LIFE, QUOTES on HAPPINESS, QUOTES on MOTHERHOOD, SACRED HEART REFLECTIONS

Thought for the Day – 29 January – Meditation 5, PART TWO: The Happiness of the Heart of Jesus in the Hidden Life

Posted on by AnaStpaul

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!

PART ONE:
https://anastpaul.com/2025/01/28/thought-for-the-day-28-january-meditation-5-part-onethe-happiness-of-the-heart-of-jesus-in-the-hidden-life/

Posted in Meditations on the HIDDEN LIFE, QUOTES on CREATION, QUOTES on HAPPINESS, QUOTES on UNITY/with GOD, SACRED HEART REFLECTIONS

Thought for the Day – 28 January – Meditation 5, PART ONE:The Happiness of the Heart of Jesus in the Hidden Life

Posted on by AnaStpaul

Thought for the Day – 28 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 ONE:
The Happiness of the Heart of Jesus in the Hidden Life

Where there is union of heart with God, there must be happiness because, the essential element of happiness, is present there, no matter what may be the circumstances in which that life is cast.

We intend in this Meditation to reflect on some of the sources of happiness, wherein we ourselves, may share with the human Heart of God. In the Beginning, when He had finished the Work of Creation, Holy Scripture tells us – “God saw all the things He had made and they were very good.” (Genesis 1:31) These words are suggestive of the Divine complacency in the beautiful Work accomplished and we recognise, a reproduction of this sublime joy of the Creator, in the appreciation, with which, the Heart of Jesus contemplated the works of Nature.

The perception of the beautiful is a Divine lineament which sin has never been able to utterly erase from the human soul but which, is more strikingly developed, in proportion to that purity of heart which imparts judgement, as to the source from whence, all created beauty emanates: “Blessed are the clean of heart, for they shall see God.” Now what heart was ever comparable in purity and singleness to the human Heart of the Man-God?

Hence it is, that Jesus, walking amidst the fair scenes of Nazareth, could appreciate, with an intensity unknown to us, all the loveliness His Eye beheld; just as years afterwards, when, fatigued with the labours of the day, He found refreshment on the shaded slopes of Olivet and holy joy, as His Eye wandered over the blue waters of Genesereth, sparkling in the sunlight.

He rejoiced, we say, in these things because, His Heart was full of all that was Divine because, He saw in them at once, the expression of the Divine Beauty and the Creation of the Divine Hand; because, His Heart was pure and single and, therefore, as it sought but God and desired but God, so it found Him everywhere.

Lastly, He rejoiced in all Creation, inasmuch, as He saw in it, the Work of His Own Hand by reason of His unity of operation with the Father, resulting from the unity of the Divine Nature.

Posted in GOD ALONE!, In the PRESENCE of GOD, Meditations on the HIDDEN LIFE, QUOTES on SANCTITY, QUOTES on SILENCE, QUOTES on THE VOICE OF GOD, QUOTES on UNITY/with GOD, SACRED HEART REFLECTIONS

Thought for the Day – 27 January – Meditation 4, Part Two – Of the Presence of God Considered in the Hidden Life

Posted on by AnaStpaul

Thought for the Day – 27 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 4, Part Two – Of the Presence of God
Considered in the Hidden Life

Let us now consider the fruits of constant attention to the Divine Presence which are first produced in the heart and from thence, reflected throughout the whole life.

The Soul of Jesus looked ever upon the Father’s Face and, as He looked, the flames of love rose ever higher within His Sacred Heart. This is the testimony which He gives of Himself: “He Who sent Me, is with Me and He hath not left Me alone; for I do always, the things which please Him.” (John 8:29)

If a servant, from the motive of fear, performs with care and attention those things which please his master, when he is conscious of that master’s presence, how much more will the faithful soul, do this from a motive of love in the Presence of our Father in Heaven. Such will be the first result of this holy exercise. The more habitually it is practiced, the more constant too, will be the practice of virtue, since the soul’s first desire will be ,to “do always the things which please” the Divine object of its love, of Whose Presence, it is so conscious.

It must be remarked, however, the actions which flow from this holy recollection in God, have, in them, nothing forced, nothing constrained.
“Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.” (2 Corinthians 3:17)
The heart and mind are really where their treasure is, that is, in God and in those things which refer to His honour and glory and, this is true recollection, widely different from that studied and simply external modesty which is often exaggerated, maintained with effort and which is perhaps, sometimes assumed, through spiritual vanity.

When the interior eye has been really attracted by the Divine Beauty, exterior objects lose their charm and are held in regard, only as far as duty and charity demand. When the inward ear habitually listens to the Divine Whisper, silence is then a joy and no longer a constraint. Habitual reverence will manifest itself in the whole exterior – a gentle, spontaneous and unconscious reverence flowing from the union of the soul with God and from the tranquil happiness which it experiences in the Presence of its Treasure.

Let us, then, beg a lively faith in the Divine Presence and the grace to acquire the sanctifying habit of walking constantly within It, so that, with truth, we may say to God:
“I am always with Thee.”
Then will virtues flourish in our souls, beneath that genial influence, like flowers beneath the sun.
Thus shall we grow in likeness to Jesus and make advance in our union with His Sacred Heart.

PART ONE:
https://anastpaul.com/2025/01/26/thought-for-the-day-26-january-meditation-4-part-one-of-the-presence-of-god-considered-in-the-hidden-life/

Posted in GOD ALONE!, In the PRESENCE of GOD, JUNE-THE SACRED HEART, Meditations on the HIDDEN LIFE, QUOTES for CHRIST, QUOTES on LOVE of GOD, QUOTES on SANCTITY, QUOTES on UNITY/with GOD, SACRED HEART QUOTES, SACRED HEART REFLECTIONS

Thought for the Day – 26 January – Meditation 4, Part One – Of the Presence of God Considered in the Hidden Life

Posted on by AnaStpaul

Thought for the Day – 26 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 4, Part One – Of the Presence of God
Considered in the Hidden Life

If there is one exercise which conduces more efficaciously than another, to our sanctification, it is assuredly that of the Presence of God. If one means be more conducive than another, to attain that holy exercise, it would seem to be, a true and solid devotion, to the Heart of Jesus.
His most holy Soul, being united to the Word, never lost the view of the Beatific Vision, although, the beatitude and the joy of that Vision, were by a miracle, withheld from overflowing into the lower functions of His Soul, in order that He might be able to suffer, in His Humanity.

The nearest resemblance to our Lord which some of the Saints have attained, in this respect, may be found in such transient glimpses of the Divine Beauty, as we find revealed in their lives.
With those extraordinary ways, by which God sometimes vouchsafes to visit a few favoured souls, we have nothing to do at present. When we speak, therefore, in this meditation, of the habitual Presence of God, we refer but to that union of the soul, with Him, which was ordinary in the Saints and which may be attained – in more or less degree – by faithful correspondence with grace.

Our facility in maintaining the Divine Presence, will be measured, by the extent of our knowledge of God, since, in proportion to our knowledge of Him, will be our love and, it is love which keeps us in the recollection of His Presence and that impels us, to think of Him and of all which relates to Him.
This the Heart of Jesus teaches us. His Soul saw God. It knew Him with a knowledge which no other soul but His, could have supported. His love equalled His knowledge and it was in the mysterious light of such knowledge and such love, that He walked on earth – never alone, even in the midst of the most cruel abandonment on the part of creatures, (John 16:32) – and, He was never forsaken, even when given up to the pangs of supreme agony and dereliction.

That which proved, the consolation of the human Heart of Jesus and, after Him, of all His Saints, maybe the same in the case of each one of us!
Let us but apply ourselves to know God’s Beauty and to hear His Voice and our hearts will quickly learn to turn towards Him, to seek His Face and delight in His Presence. The consciousness of that Presence will then become an abiding source of tranquil devotion and of peace of heart, if not of sensible joy. It will greet us, at our first awakening, with encouragement to commence another day of trial; it will follow us amidst our occupations, console us in our sorrows, support us in our temptations, until we shall sink to rest, when the day is over, in the bosom of that Father Whom we have felt so near to us and Whose Presence will be our last thought, lulling us to sleep in the calm consciousness of His protection.

As the appreciation of the excellence of this holy exercise increases, the soul finds more facility and more charm in occupying itself with God and becomes, by degrees, more familiar with the thought of Him.
It will love to recall the Gospel narratives of the Life of our Blessed Lord. It will, in time, learn to feel at home, as it were, amongst them and thus ,it will be enabled, to make for itself a solitude, a hidden life apart from the material life which externally surrounds it. This habit the Sacred Scripture calls “walking with God” for by it we make Him our Companion here below.

It is of this habitual dwelling in the Divine Presence that Jesus affords us, so perfect a model in the Holy House of Nazareth.

Posted in ASPIRATIONS and EJACULATIONS, GOD ALONE!, Meditations on the HIDDEN LIFE, QUOTES on CONSOLATION, QUOTES on LOVE of GOD, SACRED HEART ASPIRATIONS

Thought for the Day – 25 January –  Meditation 3 – The Utility and Consolation of the Hidden Life

Posted on by AnaStpaul

Thought for the Day – 25 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 3 – The Utility and Consolation
Which the Hidden Life of Jesus Christ Affords Us

Notwithstanding the magnitude of the external Work for which our Lord came down upon earth, He led the life of a recluse, up to three short years before He closed His mortal career, exercising the lowly trade of a carpenter in the obscurity of Nazareth.
Let us linger longer on this reflection, pregnant with matter for years of meditation and with usefulness and consolation for ourselves.

It discloses to us, in the first place, that no state of life no occupation – no deprivation of those things which the world esteems great and which, the natural man highly values, need form an obstacle to our co-operation with the Divine Mission of Jesus Christ on earth. Had He spent the whole, or the greater part of His Life, in working miracles, in preaching, in bearing testimony to His Divinity, in various ways, during the short time of His Public Ministry, we might indeed have hesitated to associate ourselves with a Work, so far beyond and above us. Had He placed before us but the example of the terrible sufferings of His Passion, we might justly have persuaded ourselves that our frailty could not attain to the imitation of so exalted a model.
But, it is Jesus of Nazareth who invites us to contemplate Him, during the long years of His Hidden Life and, to learn of Him the lessons He will so gently teach us. He asks us but to clothe ourselves with His Spirit, to form our hearts on His, in order to enable us to participate in His Mission, whatever may be our state of life.

It is not simply the exterior Life of our Blessed Lord that we are about to consider. It is, above all, the life of His Sacred Heart in the solitude of Nazareth which forms the chief matter for our meditation and, in this lies abundant consolation and instruction.

Our state of life maybe one with which the Actions we behold Jesus performing in Joseph’s workshop, are not compatible but are, for that reason, precluded from the imitation of His virtues, from appropriating to ourselves, the spirit which animated His Sacred Heart, from adopting as our own, the intentions for which He lived and laboured? Not so. The Heart of Jesus was the same in every phase of His Life and, the object of that Heart’s devotedness never changed. Whether He planed wood at Nazareth, or wrought miracles in Judea, the glory of His Father and the salvation of the world, were the One Aim ever kept in view.
What an immense source of consolation for countless hearts, would this thought be, if only they could be made to grasp it:
“I, too, can live and act for the same great end, regardless of the sphere of life in which Providence has placed me and of the exterior actions which my state of life requires of me.”

We know, it is the spirit which animates our works which renders them precious in the Sight of God, or otherwise. He asks not from us those which are beyond our reach. He does not desire any which would oblige us to do violence to the circumstances with which He has Himself surrounded us. He would fain possess our hearts, He yearns to be the Final End of all their aspirations, of all their intentions, so that His interests may be the main-spring of all our outward acts.
This He seeks throughout the world, amongst rich and poor, learned and ignorant, secular and religious alike and the souls, in whom He finds the closest union of sentiment with the Heart of the Great Solitary of Nazareth, will be found best disposed for receiving His choicest benedictions! And they will not deem it the least of these benedictions that they are enabled to sanctify the duties of their state, whatever it may be?

Yes, dear lovers of the Heart of Jesus, many of whom are perhaps weighed down with the fear that you have it not within your power to do anything great for God, go to Nazareth and learn of the Heart of Jesus, how to render your lives holy, not only with a view to your own sanctification but also, to their fruitfulness, for God’s glory. Your actions, even the most indifferent in themselves, will thus become ennobled, made almost Divine because,, by reason of your union with the Heart of Jesus, the sap of true spiritual life, will be infused into the spirit which animates them.

All praise, honour and glory to the Divine Heart of Jesus!
(Indulgence 50 Days. Once a day, Pope Leo XIII. 14 June 1901).

Posted in CHRIST the WORD and WISDOM, Meditations on the HIDDEN LIFE, QUOTES on WISDOM

Thought for the Day – 24 January –  Meditation 2 – Meaning and Design of the Hidden Life

Posted on by AnaStpaul

Thought for the Day – 24 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 2 – Meaning and Design of the Hidden Life

There are two ways of understanding what is called a hidden life.
From one point of view it is simply a life withdrawn from the busy world – from the society of men. In this sense it bears no essential sanctity and is a mode of life, chosen by many ,who have no acquaintance with the nature of holiness, such as the Pagan philosophers and others, who withdrew from the society of their fellow-men merely, as the result of their own natural inclination and, in pursuit of a purely natural object.
Under another point of view, a hidden life means distinctly one led by each person in the solitude of. his own heart and, it is this alone which, imparts sanctity and value to that external and material seclusion which, for the most part, the world understands, by the term “hidden life.”

It is under this second aspect we are about to regard our Lord Jesus Christ, in His solitude at Nazareth, learning of Him that the sanctity and merit of our whole outer life, depends on the intentions, the motives – in a word, the life of the Sacred Heart itself.
Have we ever asked ourselves, For what do I live, if Placed as I am, in the midst of society, have I at heart any higher aim, or any end more worthy of a Christian, than the gratification of self, or the possession of some temporal interest? “” –

If I am a Religious, do I live for that which is the end and object of the Order, to which I belong? – just as every aspiration, every beat of the Heart of Jesus was directed towards the object which brought Him down from Heaven.
Or is it still – perhaps unconsciously – self, who I am seeking under the mask of a religious life?

We know, the sole aim of our Lord in coming down upon earth, was the reparation of the Divine glory and the salvation of the world. We can have no doubt, as to the infallibility of the means He took, for accomplishing this end. Nevertheless, it is with astonishment perhaps, we behold Him passing nearly the whole of His mortal career in solitude, employed in the most ordinary occupations and withholding the manifestation of any of those marvellous deeds which we should imagine, could alone be in proportion, to so sublime an end.

Jesus, the Eternal Wisdom, knew that the lives of the greater part of men, would be passed in a routine of ordinary actions, according to their state and, He foresaw, the necessity of teaching them how to sanctify this common life, generally, so little esteemed or understood, as well as of correcting, in them, the universal error which imagines that only those actions, are meritorious or worthy of admiration which are great, or brilliant, in themselves.

Have we not been sometimes tempted to consider, our state of life, an excuse for doing nothing for God’s glory, or for the promotion of His interests?
If we are in Religion, have we not deluded ourselves with the idea that, the material and commonplace nature of the employments confided to us, are an obstacle to our labouring for God and to our union with Him by prayer and recollection?

Let us fix our thoughts upon Jesus of Nazareth and ask ourselves, whether the uninteresting character of His Life, in that obscure home, was any impediment to the accomplishment of the One Great Work, He had ever in His Heart, or to the union of His Heart, with that Eternal Father to Whose Love it ever corresponded?

Posted in CHRIST the WORD and WISDOM, CHRIST, the WAY,TRUTH,LIFE, JUNE-THE SACRED HEART, Meditations on the HIDDEN LIFE, SACRED HEART QUOTES, SACRED HEART REFLECTIONS

Thought for the Day – 23 January – The Grandeur of the Hidden Life

Posted on by AnaStpaul

Thought for the Day – 23 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.” P.S: The will NOT all be as long as this Introduction.
(We return to Fr Clarke for February with his Meditations on The Great Truths.)

Meditation 1 – The Grandeur of the Hidden Life

The period of our Lord’s Life on earth which still remains least known, even to many devout souls, is that which He spent in the retirement of Nazareth.

Devotion to the Sacred Passion, or even to the Divine Infancy, is more or less prevalent and yet, it is too often only very superficially understood. But the Mysteries of the Hidden Life, although it occupied the greater portion of the three-and-thirty years, is well-nigh a sealed book, or at least, it is a volume of which the pages have scarcely been turned. When we ask ourselves why it is so, the answer comes to us without much difficulty.

The generality of minds find nothing attractive in that which bears upon its surface the character of monotony, nothing great in that which fails to wear a brilliant appearance. Men will not take the trouble to seek a treasure which is hidden beneath a commonplace exterior and hence, the Hidden Life of Nazareth, putting forward no brilliant show, marked by no externally striking incidents, has but little attraction for those who know not how to recognise grandeur in abasement, or who care not to seek what is supernatural and Divine, when it is veiled under a common and everyday life appearance.

It is true that the natural craving of the human heart seeks to attain to something great. In fact, the misapplication of this imperious necessity, is that which causes the fearful state of the world at the present day. Many a fall has doubtless begun, in the yearning of the heart, after some apparently greater work than that which lay within its grasp. False lights have been followed and souls, losing in those cases the right track, have drifted away and been shipwrecked on the rocks of pride and infidelity. Whereas others, directed by a similar yearning, have followed the True Light, and have found, in the imitation of the Life of Jesus Christ, the real greatness which their souls were seeking. Many a high vocation has probably been abandoned because the soul did not grasp the truth which the humility, obedience and self-annihilation which were demanded of it, placed within its reach, the very means requisite for attaining the most sublime of all ends which it could propose to itself.

This seems to have been the thought of Saint Ignatius, when, in the striking contemplation of “The Kingdom of Christ” which has inspired countless souls with contempt for the world and has led them to enroll themselves under the only banner worthy of their nobility, as brethren and co-heirs with Christ, he remarks that everything in the enterprise to which we are invited, is great. The same may be said of the Hidden Life – that school wherein we learn to become truly great, inasmuch as it constantly places before us, in our Lord, the most perfect end to aim at in all our actions and the highest of all examples to guide our interior intentions.

The Model proposed to us is the Incarnate Wisdom Himself; the means for attaining our end, is the practice of the virtues and the adoption of the aspirations and desires, of His Sacred Heart; the end itself, is the same as that which brought Him down from Heaven, for which He lived and died; our companions should be the Saints of every age for whom Nazareth has ever been, at once, a school and a dwelling of predilection for their souls.

The very limited attention, then, which even the greater number of pious persons give to this portion of our Lord’s Life, must be attributed to the absence of that spirit of faith which, enables us to pierce the veils and to discern true greatness, beneath what, in the eyes of human wisdom, appears contemptible!

This same absence of attraction maybe accounted for, by the monotonous character which each year externally presents. The restless thirst for something exciting and ‘sensational’ which now penetrates, even into matters of religion, here finds no satisfaction. Hence, it is that the name of Nazareth which, to souls who have dwelt much in thought and affection with Jesus in His years of solitude, awakens such thrilling memories and elicits such burning acts of love, falls coldly and without significance, on the ears of many, for whose sake, nevertheless, He chose to bear that title, at once so despised and so glorious – Jesus Nazarenus, Jesus of Nazareth.

We must, then, in order to give ourselves efficaciously to the Meditation of the Hidden Life of Jesus, in the first place, disabuse our minds of that false judgement which would lead us to esteem only that which displays its utility and its greatness, upon the surface. In the next place, we must remember that the Life of Jesus at Nazareth is, in more senses than one, His Hidden Life. It is pre-eminently His Interior Life there, we wish to study – the life of His Sacred Heart and, it is precisely in that light, that it forms a fitting subject for the closest attention of all those who claim to be numbered amongst the lovers of the Sacred Heart and whose, desire it is, to know it more profoundly, in order that they may love it more intensely.

It is not sufficient to read of the exterior actions which our Blessed Lord performed, or of the exterior sufferings to which He submitted. These are, it is true, the outward expressions of the Love which inwardly consumed Him. But, a far more perfect knowledge, of the character of Jesus, will be obtained by him who, through prayer and meditation, shall penetrate into the source within, whence flowed every action He wrought and, every word He uttered, than can ever be reached by the soul which regards only the exterior – however full of meaning and expression, as in the Person of our Lord that exterior may have been.

There were those who, while He was on earth, beheld His works and heard His words and were in no way touched by them. The thoughts and intentions which moved Him in acting, speaking and suffering, remained hidden from them, their ignorance being, in great measure, an effect of their willful blindness, as it is written: “If you will not believe, you shall not understand.” (Isaias 7:9, Septuagint Version)

The same may be said of a number of persons at the present day. The outward expression of the humility, patience, obedience and other virtues of our Lord, together with that of His Love for His Heavenly Father and for men, makes little impression upon us becausewe are, through our own indifference, strangers to the living furnace of Love within His Breast. Thus, we fail to recognise in what we read of Jesus, the true character of His Words and actions, the manifestation of His inmost desires and yearnings – the throbbing of His Heart for us.

All that has been said applies in a special manner to the portion of our Lord’s Life which He passed at Nazareth. The very monotony, the daily round of commonplace duties and ordinary actions, necessitates our penetrating into the hidden source, wherein is to be found the motive for the prolonged hidden life of One ,Who had such a stupendous work before Him to accomplish on earth and Who allowed Himself, so short a space in which to fulfill it.

Let us, then, in our love for the Sacred Heart, endeavour to become more intimately acquainted with its Life at Nazareth, so that, charmed with the marvels we shall there discover, we may be filled with desire to act and suffer with the same motives and intentions, which led to the actions and sufferings of Jesus and thus, arrive in time, at a more just appreciation, of the true character and blessed fruits, of a life formed on the model of the Hidden Life at Nazareth. Amen