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 utility 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 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 that lie abundant consolation and instruction.
Our state of life may be one with which the actions we behold Jesus performing in Joseph's workshop are not compatible, but are we 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 that it is the spirit which animates our works, that 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 that 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.
- text taken from the 1906 edition of The Heart of Jesus of Nazareth - Meditations on the Hidden Life; it has the Imprimatur if Bishop John Baptist Butt, Diocese of Southwark, England, 5 February 1890