When we contemplate the Life of our Lord Jesus Christ at Nazareth, the nature of His occupations during that long series of years, and the contentment with which He pursued His monotonous round of humble duties, we cannot but admit that His Hidden Life presents an admirable encouragement to those who, being neither occupied amidst the noise and hurry of the world, nor withdrawn from it by works great and glorious in themselves, are painfully impressed with the idea that they are useless in God's service. A hidden life is one of faith, and the Divine Master is the Exemplar of it. The Priest, the Missioner, the Sister of Charity, etc., may and frequently do behold the fruits of their labours either in souls converted to the Church, or in those who have been restored to the practice of their religion through their ministry, or in their success with at least a fair proportion of the little ones confided to their care. But there are others whose mission it is to retrace, in a more special manner, the Hidden Life of Jesus, and this, not only in the cloister, but also in the midst of the world, and into whose daily routine enter none of those external works which render so great glory to God. The lives of such are passed in ordinary material labour, or even in a round of worldly pastimes so irksome for a heart to which the Holy Spirit has breathed and whispered of higher things, or in one of those Religious Orders which are devoted exclusively to the practice of prayer and penance. Amongst these there may be souls that burn with a strong desire to labour for the interests of God, but either their state of life or their circumstances prevent them from doing this in any visible or material way. Let such persons turn their inward eye to their Divine Master engaged in the workshop at Nazareth, and with the true spirit of faith behold the life He there led during the principal part of His days on earth. Contemplation like to that will teach them to believe and understand how God chooses ways of glorifying Himself, and of effecting His designs for the salvation of the world, very different from those which human wisdom would select.
They will derive, moreover, courage to persevere in their apparently inglorious and useless life, from the new consciousness, to which they will be awakened, that whatever paths in life may have been allotted to them, they can, by animating themselves with the spirit of Jesus Christ, glorify God, and co-operate with Him for the salvation of souls.
Faith in the hidden wisdom of God's dealings is of inestimable value to the soul, and of immense importance in the work of its sanctification. It enables us to adore God in spirit and in truth, renders us quick-sighted in recognizing Him under the most obscure veils, and forms in us the habit of discerning the operations of His Wisdom, His Love, and His other Attributes, in the various events of life. It further raises us above the material things around us, prevents us from attaching too much importance either to the visible success, or to the apparent unsuccess of our endeavours, and enables us to believe that, although the former of these may tend to the glory of God, the latter may - however contrary to the judgments of men - serve for His greater glory. This thought is to a loyal, generous, unselfish heart, even sweeter than the enjoyment of manifest success, for in that might mingle much natural and earthly satisfaction.
This sentiment, which abode in the Heart of Jesus, and supported His Humanity during the long weary years of His Hidden Life, has from Him been communicated to the solitaries, who, while their hearts have been on fire for the interests of the Church, have been enabled to persevere in their lives of isolation and penance, and to the virgins who, in the same spirit of faith, have embraced lives of ceaseless prayer and abnegation, becoming thus living reproductions of the life of Nazareth.
It is faith in the efficacy of a life hidden in God which sustains, in our days, the hands of those who pray upon "the desert mountains" for the cause of God and of souls, and which encourages other souls, hidden in the midst of the world, to pursue in secret their life of interior virtue, by which they lend so powerful an aid to the Church of God and to all the interests of His glory.
To seem and feel as though we were doing nothing for an interest we have at heart, and yet to believe that our apparent inaction - our divinely arranged incapacity is precisely the way by which we are to contribute to its advancement, this is an act of faith whereby we do greatly glorify God.
In order to attain the abiding spirit of faith in our souls, let us ask our Lord to increase it within us day by day, Adauge nobis fidem. (Luke 17:5) Then may we take courage to persevere in the imitation of the Hidden Life, with the view of thus assisting the Church, and of co-operating with the Divine Labourer of Nazareth in the salvation of the world, by the same means which He Himself chose for that end during so many years.
- 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