We know by faith that the whole life of our Lord on earth is renewed in His Sacramental Life upon our altars - Memoriam fecit mirabilium suorum. Thus each of us can meditate, in His very presence, on that portion of His Life and Passion to which we feel most powerfully attracted. Now, if there be one portion of His previous life which seems more clearly and faithfully reproduced than another in the Blessed Sacrament, it surely is His Hidden Life. This thought is so eloquently developed in the work entitled L'Apostolat de la Priere, by Father Ramtere, S.J., that we cannot do better than quote some passages from it. The fame and excellence of this valuable work may have rendered it familiar to many of our readers, but they especially, we think, will not find these passages out of place, in connection with the subject under consideration.
"What was His occupation during those long years of His Hidden Life at Nazareth? ... He prayed; and thus at Nazareth, as efficaciously as upon Calvary, He wrought out the salvation of mankind. Nazareth! this single word speaks more forcibly in favour of the Apostleship than any treatise or argument. These thirty years of hidden life would be incomprehensible to us did we not look upon them as a glorious exemplification of the power which the meanest occupations possess, when animated by zeal and prayer, to obtain grace from Heaven and the salvation of souls. ... He unceasingly dwells in our tabernacles that this spirit (of prayer) may remain always equally active, in the bosom of the Church. How eloquent is the lesson given us by our Divine Saviour from His silent throne, where He repeats all the teachings of His Life! Let us pause for a moment and listen whilst we try to comprehend this enduring mystery of love and prayer. What does Jesus Christ do in the Holy Eucharist? Apparently nothing, but in reality everything. This is His Life in the Blessed Sacrament.... Through the length of the day He prays, and whilst all around Him is in a state of excitement and commotion, whilst ungrateful man forgets his heavenly country, despises and denies his Saviour, neglects the care of his own soul, and sacrifices his eternal interests to perishable and frivolous occupations, the suppliant voice of the Divine Mediator appeals in his behalf from the depths of His tabernacles. Through the length of the night also He prays, and whilst His rational creatures, buried in sleep, have no longer intelligence to know or will to love their Creator, Jesus Christ lives, knows, adores, loves, and prays unceasingly for them - Semper vivens ad interpellandum pro nobis. Generations disappear, each in its turn, from the world's stage, year succeeds year, age follows age; but Jesus Christ remains ever living, ever praying, and by His prayers bringing sanctification to generations, and new worshippers to His Heavenly Father, thus realizing the ancient figure of perpetual sacrifice. So is He ever in the midst of us, as our living and substantial prayer, in a word, from the Tabernacle souls are saved and life is shed abroad upon the earth."
Could there be found a more faithful reproduction of the Hidden Life of our Lord than that Sacramental Life so eloquently described in the few lines quoted above? If it is objected by those who have but superficially considered the life of our Lord at Nazareth, and whose appreciation of it consequently has been limited to His external occupations, that there is to be found in His Mystic Life upon the altar no reproduction of His manual labour, of His common every-day life in the Holy House, we reply that neither is there in the Adorable Sacrament any visible reproduction of His Public Life or Passion, yet to the mind and heart of the believer how real, though mystic, it is! Memoriam fecit mirabilium suorum.
It is also to be remembered that although our Lord, in His Hidden Life, gave to all succeeding generations the example of labour as being the special penance imposed upon man after the Fall by Almighty God Himself yet the manual labour in which we see Him occupied for so many years of His Life, was far from being His principal occupation.
During the life at Nazareth our Lord was rendering actual service to the world, equal to that which He would afterwards render in His Public Life, and in His Passion. Each moment was of priceless value, a value which suffered no diminution from its being concealed from the knowledge of men. This service was chiefly rendered by the ceaseless prayer which, as we have seen, mounted from His Sacred Heart to the Father's bosom during those hidden years.
The prayer which Jesus offered contained in itself the four great ends of sacrifice - adoration, thanksgiving, mediation, and impetration. Let us go in the spirit of faith to the silent Tabernacle, and there reverently kneel and meditate in the very Presence of the Divine Solitary of Nazareth, who still continues His life-long service to the world, still loves, still prays, still by the might of His prayer holds back His Father's arm from striking the rebellious nations, and the souls that have grown hardened in sin, and is still, for countless numbers of His creatures, the secret source of the graces that are streaming in upon their souls, and drawing them closer and closer to Himself.
Not only is it the Prayer of the Hidden Life which is perpetuated in the Adorable Sacrament of the Altar. We find His poverty there also but too faithfully reproduced. Surrounded frequently by the dwellings of the rich, He, the hidden God of all creation, reposes in churches devoid of ornament, upon an altar whereon no traces of aught is to be found that could suggest the Presence of the King of Kings, in a Tabernacle rough and common as was the little House at Nazareth, and everything else in keeping with it.
If we wish to behold the obedience and humility of Jesus of Nazareth perpetuated before our eyes, again let us turn to Him in His Sacramental Life; where we shall see Him obedient to His creatures once more, remaining in His Tabernacle or coming forth therefrom, or set up on His altar-throne for Exposition, according to their will. They bear Him whither they will, and to whom they will. Nay, alas! He submits sometimes to the humiliation of being obliged to enter into souls defiled with sin. He does the will of all, and He makes no resistance. In the same way as at Nazareth He remained silent, despite the evils that He knew were going on around Him, and the erroneous doctrines that were being taught, so now He speaks not, although nothing occurs of which He has not a perfect knowledge.
How wonderful a mystery of faith is the silence of God upon our altars. What evils are running riot through the world, what storms of rebellious passions rage even in the actual Presence of the Blessed Eucharist, what multitudes of false doctrines are leading the unwary astray, yet Jesus is silent. No longer is His voice heard upon the troubled waters commanding the storm to cease - no longer does He confute the errors of the modern Sadducees and Pharisees, nor bid souls, whom the world has long claimed for its own, to leave all things and follow Him. How often, perhaps, do such men as we have described, approach within a few feet of Him who abides there in His Sacramental Presence! One word from Him would convince them of the errors of their sins, and cause others to despise their aimless lives and to become His for ever. Yet that word Jesus speaks not. He has returned to His old habits of Nazareth. He prays, He pleads incessantly for all, but He will be obedient to the laws of that state in which He has placed Himself, and silence is a part of that mystic state, as it belonged to His Life at Nazareth. His action upon the world, upon souls, is hidden. Not even the children of the Church realize the efficacy of the Life of Jesus in the Holy Eucharist, or the magnitude of the influence which He exercises from thence over them and over the entire world. Truly, then, is that mystery of faith and of love wherein we adore the "hidden God," a reproduction, as we have said, of the Hidden Life at Nazareth.
Have we ever formed to ourselves an idea of the efficiency of a life modelled - as to its interior spirit - upon that Sacramental Life of Jesus in the Tabernacle? The lessons which He so silently yet so eloquently gives us there, are but the epitome of those which He gives us, equally silently, from the Holy House of Nazareth. From the former, as from the latter. He forms us to habits of ceaseless prayer, of silence, of obedience, poverty, and humility, but above all He teaches us that truth, so difficult to be comprehended by the greater number, so repugnant to the activity and egotism of human nature even when comprehended, that the efficacy of a life for the glory of God and for the interests of souls consists, not in those actions which can "be seen of men," but rather in those which "the Father sees in secret," and which are ignored by men.
The fruit of meditation on the Sacramental Life of Jesus being, from this point of view, in all respects similar to that on the Hidden Life, it is needless to repeat here what has been laid down in preceding chapters, for application to ourselves. It remains but to invite those who have not yet followed the practice, to draw out for themselves in their meditation the analogy between the Lives of Nazareth and of the Holy Eucharist. Let others who find too great difficulty in calling before them the scene of Christ's Hidden Life, eighteen centuries ago, kneel before the silent Tabernacle and contemplate there the faithful reproduction of that Life abiding in our very midst.
Let them do more than this. In order that their meditation may have lasting and effective results, it should enable them to appreciate a life hidden in God, yet in its very hiddenness, most active for all the interests of His glory. It should render them contented to be forgotten, to be neglected and ignored, then will it be their consolation that none of these circumstances can prevent them from glorifying God, or working for the good of souls, but rather enables them to labour more efficaciously for the eternal interests of men, inasmuch as their labour is less esteemed by others, and consequently bears a closer resemblance to the means which Jesus chose during the greater part of His Life, for effecting the salvation of the world.
- 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