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From one point of view it is simply a life withdrawn from the busy world – from the society of men.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?
AnaStpaul 
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