The Royal Psalmist, the figure of our Lord, exults in the thought that by the Divine appointment, "the day goes on" - that is, all things are either formally willed or permitted by Him whom no creature can resist: and then he adds, in confirmation, as it were, of what he has advanced, and carrying on his thought in the generous love and joy of his heart: "for all things serve Thee." (Psalm 118:91) That which David sang ages before, was the abiding thought of the Sacred Heart, even as it has been the secret of the peace with which innumerable saints, who have caught the spirit of the Heart of Jesus, have remained constant and unshaken amidst the storms that have buffeted them here below.
Sublime, indeed, is the figure of our Divine Lord as we contemplate Him toiling at Nazareth, as though for Him there were no other work on earth to do than to saw, and plane wood, and fashion rude implements of agriculture, but sublimer still the unruffled peace, the grand tranquility of His Sacred Heart, despite His full knowledge of the false doctrines, the errors, the follies that were being propagated around Him, the darkness in which as yet the whole world was lying, and which He alone could dissipate. Despite His consuming zeal to make known His Father to men and to attract them to His love, notwithstanding His all-holy thirst to communicate to them that eternal life, which He had come down on earth to bring them - the knowledge, the true knowledge of "the only true God and Jesus Christ, whom He had sent," (John 17:3) - yet He remained in Joseph's workshop without a ruffle to stir the grand tranquility of His Holy Soul. Beautiful in His calmness, majestic in His simplicity, we behold in Him the excellence, the perpetual order of the Father's will. Although all seemed to human reason going wrong, or, to say the least, at a standstill, so far as the evangelization of the world was concerned, yet Jesus was content. While the long monotonous years succeeded each other at Nazareth, the same unruffled peace abode in His Sacred Heart, and offered its silent tribute of praise to His Father. His apparent inaction was an appointment of the Father's will - the realization of an eternal decree: by His ordinance each day went on in its appointed course, and Jesus knew that all things serve that will from whence they originally emanate, and this was enough.
Pax multa diligentibus legem tuam: et non est illis scandalum. The truth of these words is above all verified in the Saint of Saints, on whose Sacred Heart, together with its wonderful lessons for ourselves, we are meditating.
Much peace have they who love Thy law; and to them there is no stumbling-block." {Psalm 118:165) Now, the law of God is one and the same thing as His holy will, so that there is not a verse of the Psalm, from which the above words have been quoted, which may not be applied to the praise of the Divine will and the delight of the just soul in its accomplishment.
In what heart, then, has the will of God ever been so paramount as in the Human Heart of Jesus, and if Saint Teresa, in the exuberance of her love, could say, "How sweet it is to suffer in doing the will of God!" what must have been the abiding sentiment of Him who declared that. His "meat was to do the will of Him who sent Him"!
Thus, in the midst of all we have dwelt upon in this as well as in preceding meditations, an unbroken peace reigned within the Sacred Heart, so that no event, however seemingly adverse, no course of circumstances, the lengthened duration of which would have rendered them intolerable to us, could have offered any stumbling-block to our Lord. "All things serve Thee." That word which announces the Divine will, and goes forth from the mouth of God, "shall not return to Him void, but shall do whatsoever He pleases, and shall prosper in the things for which He sent it." (Isaias 55:11) Such was the infallible source of the Divine peace reigning in the Heart of Jesus, which, for all the causes we have considered, as will become gradually clearer to us in the light of prayer, was still more marvelous and Divine in the silence of the hidden years at Nazareth than it was afterwards, even amidst the outrages and agonies of the Passion.
Our Blessed Lord, before He left this world, promised us a peace such as this world cannot give, and He particularly signalized the blessing He was going to bestow upon us as His peace: "My peace I give unto you." (John 14:27) It is, then, the peace of His own Sacred Heart that we may, if we will possess as our own, but only on the condition that we endeavour to render our hearts like to that of Jesus. If the same mind is not in us, if the same loyal sentiments towards our Father who is in Heaven, the same contentment consequently with all His appointments, whether regarding ourselves personally or others, are not found in our hearts, in vain shall we hope to possess within us any degree of the peace of the Heart of Jesus, because the very source of His peace will be wanting to us.
If our love of the Father were loyal, disinterested love, we should be indifferent as to the means which His Wisdom makes choice of for bringing about His designs. We should possess within us the infallible certainty that His will would not fail of being accomplished, that "all things serve Him;" and therefore, whether things are in accordance with our narrow views and human judgments, or not, whether they are agreeable to our desires and inclinations, or otherwise, will be to us immaterial, since the good pleasure of God, and not our own, the accomplishment of His eternal designs, and not the carrying out of our own selfish plans, will be the supreme object of our desire. Herein lies the secret of true interior peace.
Why is it then that the best of us seem to be ever distrusting the Eternal Wisdom, as if it were capable of failure in conducting all things to their appointed end? Why are we so hopelessly prejudiced in favour of our own importance that we allow ourselves to be troubled and to act as if Almighty God could not accomplish His work without us? Again, it is our egotism, our restlessness, our short-sightedness which blind us and so prevent our seeing and practically believing that "God's ways are not our ways, nor His thoughts our thoughts."
Let us look at Jesus of Nazareth, let us penetrate into the undisturbed peace and tranquility of His Sacred Heart. True, we have not His Divine knowledge enabling us to see how all things are being infallibly conducted to their end. But it must be remembered that the very science which illuminated His Holy Soul, and communicated such peace to His Sacred Heart, revealed to Him, at the same time, all the evil which was running riot through the world, the errors, the blindness, and the outrages to truth, whilst He remained quietly, silently at Nazareth, as though He were not Himself the only One who could enlighten the darkness, as though He were not at once, the Way, the Truth, and the Light.
Who amongst us has such reason on his side, so great motives, as our Divine Lord had for taking an active co-operation in carrying out the Divine plans? Yet He remained tranquilly at Nazareth until the hour had arrived, decreed from all eternity for entering on His Public Life. Why can we not learn from Him to believe that we are really co-operating with God, when we are contented to do the work He appoints for us, to remain occupied in that work as long as He wills, although it should apparently render us inactive in the cause of God, and bury ourselves in oblivion? If we can, by prayer and meditation, learn this lesson of the Divine Solitary of Nazareth, great will be our peace, which no seemingly adverse circumstances will have power to mar or interrupt.
- 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