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 up 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 dwelt from all eternity. Unchecked now by the external trammels to which in His Incarnation He had made Him- self subject, He could deliver Himself up 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 that we have chosen one too exalted for our imitation. No, Jesus prays as one of us. It is in Him a human Heart that 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.
Now, it must be remembered the Heart of Jesus did not change; what it prompted His sacred lips to pronounce for our example afterwards, it contained within itself, and expressed in its secret communications with the Father during the Hidden Life at Nazareth. Therefore, we have only to penetrate His Heart in order to hear Him praying to our Father as well as His Father, teaching us thus to be unselfish in our prayer, and showing us that He carried all our necessities and interests in His Sacred Heart. We hear Him desiring the sanctification of the Father's Name, the advancement of His Kingdom, by which all peoples and nations may be brought to His knowledge and love; we find Him praying for the accomplishment of the Father's will by men on earth, even as it is accomplished in Heaven. We shall hear Him asking also for "our daily bread," teaching us thus from whom we are primarily to expect the sustenance necessary for our temporal support, but instructing us moreover how earnestly and daily we are to pray for that "super-substantial bread" without which we shall perish everlastingly.
There, too, we learn the humble petition for the forgiveness of our sins, and the condition by which we are to hope for that forgiveness - our own forgiveness, namely, of those who may have wronged us. Finally, we hear the cry for deliverance from temptation and every evil that may result from sin offered up for others as for ourselves. Beautiful prayers of the Heart of Jesus! May you be ever in our hearts also, ever ascending from them, in union with His Heart, to the bosom of Him who is our Father likewise in Heaven.
Let us, when reciting the Pater noster, reflect that it is the expression of the prayer of the Sacred Heart during those long years of the Hidden Life, when our Lord was apparently doing nothing towards the accomplishment of His great work on earth. Surely such a reflection will help to animate us with His Spirit in reciting it, and thus render it far more efficacious in promoting His interests than we must fear it too frequently is.
In contemplating the Heart of Jesus when engaged in prayer, we must have remarked the order which He observes therein. The sanctification of His Father's Name, the coming of His Kingdom, the perfect accomplishment of His will, are the objects of the opening petitions. Then follows the begging of those benefits which we are to ask for our neighbour and for ourselves, thus practically elucidating the teaching He afterwards gave when He declared that the first commandment of the Law was the love of God above all things; and that the second was to love our neighbour as ourselves; as also when He commanded us to seek first the Kingdom of God and His justice. So will it be with us if charity is rightly ordered in our souls. The love of God, and consequently the thirst for His glory, will hold the supreme place in our hearts, from whence will flow spontaneously, as from its source, the love of our brethren and the quenchless desire for their salvation.
We have seen, too, the reverence with which Jesus prayed, a reverence which was at once tender and adoring, ready, and full of ardour. Holy Scripture tells that "He was heard for His reverence," and makes known to us the fervour with which He prayed by telling of the "strong cry and tears" with which it was accompanied. His reverence was so deep, because He knew the Majesty of Him to whom He prayed, and the intensity of fervour with which He prayed resulted from the vehemence of His desire.
From our hearts also the "strong cry" will come forth which shall "pierce the clouds" when we shall be filled with the Spirit of the prayer of our Lord's Heart, and when we have learnt to love like Him, with the same kind of love, unselfish, self-forgetting, and full of desire for the things that He desired.
Finally, we too may participate in that delight in the holy exercise of prayer which we have witnessed in the Heart of Jesus. Love is its source - love which renders prayer not an isolated act distinct from the other duties of the day, but rather a. more free, more unrestrained exercise of that which is ever going on within our hearts. He who loves God ardently, longs for the hour when, external occupations being over, he can give full scope to the effusions of his heart, alone with his Beloved.
For him the great duty of prayer has nothing irksome, even when deprived of sensible consolation. The companionship of God has for him no tediousness. Prayer is for him solitude with God, where he need have no reservations, where he need fear no criticism; he is alone with his Father, as he will be in the hour of death, as he will be throughout eternity. His soul will remain tranquilly at rest with God - his heart beating in union with the Heart of Jesus, and even in trial and in suffering, where this union exists there is peace.
And now, as the fruit of this meditation, let us ask ourselves the cause of our frequent aridity in prayer, an aridity perhaps which we have falsely attributed to some supernatural visitation, but which, we must in all sincerity acknowledge, proceeds from the want of union between our hearts and that of Jesus; the absence of an earnest, absorbing desire for all that regards His glory; an indifference to that fusion of interests which would render our hearts one with His, and make our prayer so fruitful an exercise for our own good and for the good of the Church and of society? We have the same objects to pray for now as Jesus had in the solitude of Nazareth. If therefore we do not find wherewith to occupy our minds and hearts in prayer, we can only attribute it to our little love, to our apathy for the advancement of God's glory. Let us go in spirit to Nazareth and entreat: Heart of Jesus, teach me to pray. Pater noster.
- 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