We know that all things were at once present to the mental vision of our Divine Lord. Consequently, in looking forward through the course of ages, if on the one hand He beheld the sins of all mankind, He saw also that long, bright train of the redeemed who should glorify His Father throughout eternity.
He beheld innocent souls - souls preserved by His grace from their earliest childhood - and He knew that they owed their immunity from grievous sin to Himself. It was He who had purchased for them the grace which, bedewing their souls in the early morning of life, maintained them pure and unspotted from the world. It was He who in the hidden years of Nazareth was meriting for them their love of solitude, attracting them to hide themselves in the secret of the face of God, and to embrace lives of obedience and self-denial. He saw other souls whom the world had for a while deluded, turn away from it at length with the weariness of disappointment, seeking for a rest which the world could not give them, and then their thoughts happily wandered far away to scenes very different from the actual ones amongst which they dwelt, and Jesus rose up before their vision, and His Beauty was sufficient for them,>and in His Love they found the rest which they needed. Again, He saw others long sin-stained and corrupted - aliens to God and to His commandments - deserters for many dark years from the Church, despising her laws and her sacraments, and they returned at length to pour out their repentant hearts in the Sacrament of Penance, and drink once more of the waters of life that flowed from His Heart in the Mystery of His love - the Ever-Blessed Eucharist. And He knew they owed all this to Himself. Ever as He toiled. He had before Him the vision of the redeemed - souls sanctified and saved by the grace which He was thus meriting for them - souls drawn by an invisible power to His Sacred Heart, and finding therein that for which they had so long been unconsciously craving.
He beheld some of those who had chosen hard, painful lives growing weary under the pressure of continual self-restraint, but who grew strong again in the remembrance of the long, silent years which He had passed at Nazareth, and who, drawing new life from that memory, would persevere until the end.
We read in the Gospel that, one day, the disciples having returned to our Lord, related to Him with great joy the marvels they had wrought in His Name. Upon this our Lord, though warning them against the vain complacency to which their success might expose them, "in that same hour rejoiced in the Holy Ghost;" and gave thanks to His Eternal Father, because He had "hidden these things from the wise and prudent, and had revealed them to little ones. (Luke 10:21) A like joy already thrilled through His Sacred Heart, and a like thanksgiving mounted therefrom to His Father during the hidden years at Nazareth. He beheld these "His little ones," whose minds would travel back to Nazareth, Genesareth, and Jerusalem, and be charmed with the Beautiful One they would there behold; and, in consequence of that vision of beauty, they would become saints - that is, souls enamoured with the "beauty of holiness" in God Incarnate, and desirous of retracing the same in themselves.
Not vaguely nor confusedly did our Lord behold all this; but distinctly and separately each soul passed before Him, and contributed to the joy of His Heart. You who read these lines, and I who write them, have both most certainly added our share to the sorrows of Jesus, and oh! blessed thought, it is in our own power to contribute also to His joys. In the stillness of Nazareth He knew us, He watched us, and if we may say so, He trembled for the issue of our struggles betwixt nature and grace; and when He witnessed our victories, when He watched our hearts being softened by the remembrance of His love, how light then seemed the labours and sweet the sufferings of those hidden years! Just as a like prevision made Him feel, in after time, the scourge fall light, and the thorny crown sit gently on His brow.
Can we ourselves have no share in this joy of Jesus of Nazareth? To a certain extent we can, and upon certain conditions. In the first place, our hearts must be fashioned upon that of Jesus Himself. We must love souls for His sake, just as He loved them for the sake of His Father's glory; we must love them, moreover, for their own sake, as being our brethren in Christ, even as He loved them because they were His own brethren. If we love them, we shall yearn for their salvation; and, if we can in any way contribute thereto by co-operation with our Divine Lord, we shall be filled with joy in doing so. It is true, we cannot see at the time, nor have any certainty whatever as to the success of our prayer and impetratory works in behalf of individual souls, but this only renders them more meritorious, and consequently more useful to those for whom we offer them.
How many bitter tears would be rendered sweet, how many painful sufferings light, if only our hearts were capable of the Apostolic love of the Heart of Jesus in its intense zeal for souls. If our mental eye, instead of being preoccupied with selfish calculations, were watching over the multitude wandering without a shepherd, as sheep who had gone astray - souls hungering for the Bread of Life, how might we not merit for them the grace to recognize their True Shepherd, and to surmount all obstacles that would prevent their returning to those fountains of living water, which would spring up within their souls to everlasting life.
Holy priests, and others who have a visible ministry to exercise towards souls, could tell us of the joy, unlike that which the world is able to give, which inundates their hearts when by word or work they have succeeded in leading back some poor wanderers to the Heart of Jesus, or in drawing them to appreciate His Beauty, and so to consecrate themselves to His love.
Their holy joy may well, we think, be something akin to that which must have thrilled through the Heart of Jesus, when Philip, after having listened to the eloquence of his Divine Master in speaking of His Eternal Father, exclaimed: "Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us." (John 14:8)
Now, what may be wrought for the sanctification of souls by a visible ministry, can be no less effected by an invisible ministry, of prayer and impetration. It is this that we learn in the Holy House of Nazareth, and the knowledge possessed by our Lord then of His power of meriting for souls, until the end of time, the grace to draw near to Him, and through Him to His Father, was a perpetual fount of light in His Sacred Heart. So may it be in the case of those whose co-operation with Him is altogether hidden. Not a repugnance overcome, not a duty of state performed with fidelity, not an uninteresting labour persevered in, but may win for a soul, or for innumerable souls, the grace to know Jesus and to love Him; provided only that His love already reigns in the hearts of those who co-operate with Him, without which indeed there could be no real co-operation.
Let us, then, pray incessantly that our hearts may grow in likeness to the Heart of the Divine Solitary of Nazareth. Thus shall we be able, not only to share in His blessed sorrows - so full of sanctification for ourselves - but likewise, in His all-holy joy, which will be for us no less sanctifying in its influence upon 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