Silence has ever formed one of the characteristic attractions of hidden souls, whether their vocation required of them external labours and much speaking, or whether it permitted them to retire into the cloister as to a Nazareth. By hidden souls, be it remembered, is not meant persons who, through the simple fact of their vocation, live a more or less secluded life, since there are to be found souls anything but interior in spirit, even though they live in the most absolute solitudes. We refer to souls who, through long habits of prayer and meditation on the mysteries of our Lord, have learned almost insensibly to abide more in Him than in themselves, whose thoughts, aspirations, and desires are hidden within His Heart, who suffer alone with Him, and who find the sweetness of leaning on His breast and making Him their sole confidant far more than compensation for the absence of ail human sympathy.
In souls such as these will be found no trace of that talkativeness which is but too common - of that insatiable desire of manifesting in conversation any little knowledge they may have acquired, or any pious sentiments that may have occurred to them - defects which are, as long as they exist, insurmountable barriers to the attainment of an interior spirit. Silence, it is true, is numbered amongst monastic austerities, yet is it also an earthly paradise for souls who have learned to converse heart to heart with God, and to reflect upon the eternal truths.
Now, we have seen in preceding meditations what was the habitual occupation of the Heart of Jesus during the hidden years at Nazareth, The eye of His Soul looked on God His Father, and His Heart held perpetual commune with Him. Hence what charm could the converse of creatures have for Him? True it is that in His Public Life He freely conversed with all who came to Him, and we find Him sometimes engaged in somewhat prolonged conversations; but it was the salvation or consolation of the souls with whom He conversed that He ever had in view, and it was this alone which drew forth words from His sacred lips.
While still at Nazareth His Ministry had not commenced. He was simply the Son of the obscure carpenter, and therefore He was free to preserve that silence which was so valuable in His eyes, and which throughout all ages has formed for souls, hidden in sacred cloisters, so perfect a model.
The two beings, moreover, each perfect in their degree, who shared with Him the Holy House, were too closely united to His Heart, too familiarly accustomed to His ways, not to have learnt habits of supernatural silence. It was enough to be in His Presence, to hear His footstep, to note His sighs, to meet His eye. Each conveyed its lesson to the heart. Then, again, the gentle words He spoke from time to time had in them an unction and a fullness of meaning which would have sufficed for a lifetime, and even Mary and Joseph, pondering them in their hearts, could not have exhausted all their ravishing beauty.
Thus, Jesus in the House of Nazareth toiled silently at His work, and Mary and Joseph reverently followed His guidance. Could they, perfect as they were in spiritual discernment, have done otherwise? Could they have spoken in the stillness of that mysterious and marvelous communication which was going on in their presence between the Incarnate God and His Father in Heaven?
That Jesus conversed at times with His Blessed Mother and Saint Joseph we cannot deny; but that silence was, for all the reasons we have considered, the normal habit of the House of Nazareth, is, we think, beyond all doubt.
Many who read these lines will ask how it is possible, in ordinary life, to imitate the silence of the House of Nazareth. We cannot indeed attain to it in the same degree, but who amongst us cannot at least learn how to refrain from so many useless words which daily and hourly weaken the energy of souls, and cause so serious a loss to us of that precious time which can never be recalled.
It may, however, be conceded that the example afforded us by the silence of Jesus at Nazareth has a special signification for persons whose state of life demands of them a particular respect for silence, and for the more or less rigorous practice of it according to their vocation.
To all such, silence will be the sovereign means for acquiring habits of recollection and holy prayer. It will familiarize them with the presence of Jesus and enable them to listen to His lightest whisper, and with the eyes of their soul to watch His actions and look on the beauty of His face, as did Mary and Joseph in the sanctuary of Nazareth. Spiritual visits to that sacred abode will teach us to sanctify our actions by performing them habitually in the presence of Jesus, and silence will enable us to converse interiorly with Him, thus enabling us to imitate, not only Mary and Joseph, but also Jesus Himself, who during the silence of those long hidden years, even as He toiled, held unbroken communion with His Heavenly Father.
The silence which is prescribed in all religious houses is a reproduction, more or less close, of the silence of Jesus in the House of Nazareth, and it is for this reason chiefly that it is termed holy silence. The mode in which our Divine Lord practised silence during His Hidden Life bears a distinguishing mark from the wonderful instances we have of it in the Passion, inasmuch as the former was continuous, extending over many years, and constituted as it were, His normal habit, whereas the latter was chiefly remarkable in this, that He maintained it most rigorously on occasions when terrible outrages were offered to Him, and when His personal honour was attacked, in which it forms one of the grandeurs of the Passion.
Hence it is, that although the silence of our Lord in Jerusalem when in the presence of His impious judges is, and ever will be, the dearest object of our imitation on trying occasions which the Divine Wisdom permits for the test of our virtue, yet as these occasions are ordinarily of rare occurrence, it is the habitual silence of Nazareth which will, in regard of most of us, tell with chief force upon our daily life.
Let us meditate much and frequently upon this long silence of the Incarnate Word, and, while we do so, let us ask Him to give us an ever-increasing light as to the advantages which we shall derive from imitating it in our spiritual life.
- 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