Having now considered some of the principal sufferings of the Heart of Jesus during His Hidden Life, we shall, in the present meditation, contemplate the joy that habitually resided in His Holy Soul, and pondering on its source endeavour to find a means of sharing in it ourselves.
Suffering of any kind is not in itself pleasing to human nature, and if there were not some high motive urging us to accept it, we should doubtless altogether reject it. That motive we learn from the Heart of Jesus. In the sufferings borne by Him during His Hidden Life, which have been considered in previous meditations, above all, in the humiliations to which we have seen Him subjected, He beheld a sovereign means of repairing His Father's outraged honour, and of promoting His glory - that glory which was dearer to Him than life, more precious than the throne which He had left in Paradise. Hence it was that, when the tide of sorrow rose highest in His Heart, His secret song of joy grew richer and fuller in proportion to it. When wearied with the hard, toilsome, material life He had chosen, one so unfitted to His tastes, that were all fashioned to heavenly things; when the ceaseless constraint to which He was submitted pressed heavily on His human Heart, He yet in the midst of it all, rejoiced because He found at every point the means of accomplishing His one ardent, insatiable desire. Such is the triumph of love, that pure love which rejoices in suffering for the sake of the greater glory of the object beloved.
It is useless to ignore the struggles, difficulties and trials that must be encountered in a spiritual life, difficulties as varied as are the characters of men, and the circumstances connected with them. Our task lies rather in ascertaining the means, first of supporting sufferings, and afterwards of embracing them generously and joyfully.
For this the Heart of Jesus has been, as we have seen, our mirror. Let the same motive for joy only exist in the soul, and it cannot fail to participate in the joy of the Sacred Heart; for it will have discovered a source whose sweet waters no sorrow can embitter. This is literally to "draw water with joy from the Saviour's fountains." (Isaias 12:3)
This joy however of spirit in the midst of suffering can only emanate from love. In proportion as love of self dies out, God's glory will become our only thought, our only desire; and consequently, every occasion that presents itself as favourable for promoting that glory, however painful it may be to nature, will be welcomed with a holy avidity.
Now, whilst we look steadfastly at Jesus of Nazareth, humbled, despised, poor, often weary, and suffering moreover in His Heart all that we have already contemplated, without ever losing the least degree of that tranquil joy which was habitual to Him, let us draw the contrast between ourselves and Him, and ask our hearts how we are affected when some slight sacrifice is demanded of us, which would promote the glory of God, some sacrifice of our pride, of our opinion, of a portion of our material goods, or of some other creature to which we cling. Then, again, in those who have forsaken the world, and who make profession of following Jesus Christ closely in a religious life, does the thought of God's glory preponderate over every selfish interest, and render them eager of seizing upon every occasion of increasing that glory?.If so, they will have found a treasure which shall ensure to them peace and contentment under all trials, as well as abiding joy in the Holy Ghost.
Once more, it is folly to deny that a life of sacrifice is painful to nature. It is, for instance, humanly speaking hard that persons of cultivated tastes and early habits of refinement should give themselves year after year to occupations in themselves uninteresting and uncongenial - should accustom themselves to the habits, manners, and ideas of all with whom they may be brought into closest companionship; and it is difficult to submit to persons from whom, if nature were yielded to, they would perhaps instinctively shrink. These and many other trials will present matter for a species of inward crucifixion, which one thought alone - the all-absorbing thought of the Heart of Jesus - can enable us to support with joy.
This thought - the fruit of pure love - will be a balm in every sorrow; it will come like the Angel in the Agony, to strengthen us under difficult trials, in humiliations, in contradictions, in sufferings of all kinds which are, or may be hereafter, rending our hearts; it will dissipate all sadness, and infuse into us a spirit of holy joy flowing from the purest source, namely, the happy thought that by this pang, this sacrifice, this particular humiliation, God's glory will be increased throughout eternity. This is a joy indeed which "no man can take from us," because its source can never fail, its roots are fixed on high - it is independent of all human events, nay, rather their very contrariety will but assist to strengthen them and promote its growth.
The joy which we have contemplated as habitually dwelling in the Heart of Jesus, was not simply the result of conformity to the will of His Father, still less of the remembrance of the reward which would be eternally His, when He had accomplished His work on earth, since beatitude was His by right, whether He suffered or not. The joy of the Sacred Heart was purely and pre-eminently produced by the consciousness that through His sufferings and humiliations He was repairing the wrongs of God, and promoting His greater glory.
So also is it with us. Beautiful as is the virtue of resignation to God's holy will, filled with encouragement as is the anticipation of the reward reserved for those who suffer patiently, yet something more is needed to impart that joyfulness in suffering which we consider in the Heart of Jesus, it is the motive which has God for its object, rather than ourselves. It must be that loyal love which characterized the glorious Precursor of our Lord, which made him rejoice when he saw himself "decrease" in the estimation of the people, and his Divine Master "increase," which, when asked if he were the Christ, made him answer with such holy and truthful indignation: "I am not." It must be, again, that generous love which animated the great and magnanimous heart of Saint Paul, and caused him to glory only in his infirmities, in order that thereby the power of God might be manifested in Him, and that no virtue might be attributed to himself; that love, which fired the soul of the Saint of later times, Ignatius, who may justly be termed the Apostle of "God's greater glory," in whose noble, aspiring heart grace found so rich a soil in which to plant that holy and insatiable thirst for the glory of his Master and for the exaltation of His Kingdom, which ever after inflamed his heart.
But it is in a hidden life above all others - a life which is not passed in the exercise of works great in themselves - that joy of spirit is so necessary in order to persevere happily and holily in the round of monotonous, and perhaps uninteresting duties, which it offers.
A hidden life is not, as is sometimes believed, a state engendering melancholy, or a misanthropic view of the outer world; yet it cannot be denied that some of those who embrace it become discontented, and give no evidence of that interior joy, upon the source of which we have been meditating. The reason of this is not to be ascribed to the kind of life they have chosen, but to their own egotism, which prevents them from seeking God's glory as their primary object, and consequently deprives them of the joy they would otherwise feel in procuring that glory by self-denial under the innumerable opportunities that continually present themselves. Instead of this, they are preoccupied with a thousand desires, springing forth from their own self-love. Their charity towards God is not strong enough to enable them to forget themselves, and to find their true happiness in immolating all for His interests, who they nevertheless say is their only Love.
Let us earnestly beg our Lord to pour into our hearts that generous love, which rets its joy on promoting the glory of God at its own cost. Thus will our lives, however thickly they may be strewn with thorns, be happy lives, because the motive of our joy, the purest and highest we can propose to ourselves, will be in the centre of our hearts a never-failing source of consolation. But, let us beware of being deluded by the thought that we can only glorify God by actions that are in themselves intrinsically great. Jesus, our Divine Master, had simply led a life, hidden, monotonous, comprising the most common daily actions, when His Eternal Father said: "This is My Beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." Saint Teresa had long and lovingly contemplated the Life at Nazareth, when she said that a single straw raised from the ground by obedience glorified God more than martyrdom suffered through self-love, and that if our love of God is sincere, we shall not regard the kind of action He requires of us, but we shall find a hidden sweetness in doing whatsoever His will demands, since it is in this He desires to be glorified. Let the greater glory of God be the predominant thought animating us in all our sufferings, in all our actions, in all the events of life; and assuredly there will never be for us a day so clouded that at least one ray of sunshine will not beam forth to gladden us on our way, because we shall possess within us a light of joy, which draws its source from the Heart of Jesus.
- 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