As it has been seen how easily the designs of God may be frustrated by those whom He has especially called to reproduce in themselves the Hidden Life of His Divine Son, it will be well to indicate the means by which they may avoid so great an evil as the loss of their vocation. And that we may understand more clearly how the spirit of the Hidden Life is to be acquired, it will be of service to consider some of the obstacles which lie in its way.
One perhaps of the most formidable of these obstacles is the love of whatever is sensational and exciting, and most gratifying to that restlessness of heart and frivolity of mind which are to be met with everywhere. In order to remedy this, no effort may be spared, and the soul must learn the art of self-discipline. Another obstacle is effusiveness of heart, and an intensified and habitual pre-occupation of the mind upon objects, employments, or amusements which are in themselves insignificant and unworthy of the earnestness with which they are sought after. We are not referring here to objects altogether wrong, but simply to such as are undeserving of the amount of attention and interest so frequently bestowed upon them. Even occupations which are praiseworthy in themselves may become a snare, leading souls away from the end by causing them to become absorbed in the means. Our Lord laboured at Nazareth, and His labour was holy, but He gave to it only the measure of attention required for performing it aright. Not for one instant did it withdraw His all-holy Soul from the Vision of God or from the especial work which was always before Him. Whilst His Hands were toiling, He ceased not to negotiate with His Heavenly Father the grand work of the world's Redemption. Thus it is that in one of those strictly cloistered Religious Orders which most faithfully reproduce the Life at Nazareth, the Religious are enjoined to labour with their hands, yet are forbidden to occupy themselves with works which require so much attention as would occupy their minds and divert them from the meditation of Divine things.
Now, although certainly all are not called to the same perfection, and persons living in the world cannot be expected to maintain communion with God in the same way as Religious living in their monasteries; yet all rational beings may by the help of ordinary reflection, and that degree of mortification to which every Christian is bound, arrive at giving to Caesar only what is due to Caesar, while they readily grant to God what is His by every kind of right and title.
There is another and an almost universal obstacle to an interior life which has been selected out of innumerable others, on account of its fatal influence in deterring souls from attaining any degree of really intimate friendship with the Divine Heart of Jesus. This enemy of all true spirituality is, in a word, Egotism. The expression, however, is of rather wide application, and we wish to draw attention to one particular feature of it. Perhaps scarcely any person is free from a subtle craving for notice, sympathy, or popularity, all of these being insuperable barriers to acquiring the spirit of the Hidden Life, so long as they remain unmortified in the soul. Not to speak of the grosser forms which this spiritual malady assumes, how many even of those who aim at perfection, and who therefore would not deliberately court popularity or act with the formal intention of winning praise, are nevertheless cut to the heart when public favour runs in another direction, and they are left unnoticed. Others, whom solid virtue has enabled, by God's grace, to bear away victory after victory in the spiritual warfare, are vanquished at length by the poison of the serpent, insinuating into their mind that their virtue is not appreciated, and that their successes bring them no applause. There are others whose lives have perhaps for years been a succession of continual sorrows - accepted and borne with resignation, yet leaving in their hearts a restless craving for human consolation; they would fain see that their friends appreciated the magnitude of their sufferings and the good dispositions with which they support them.
Others, again, are encompassed with humiliating circumstances, and cannot rest until they have endeavoured to explain away all that is humiliating to them; and well will it be if, in their mistaken anxiety to attain their object, they do not fall into sins of deliberate untruth.
These, and many like forms of egotism which might be enumerated, are fatal enemies to the true solitude of the soul with God, and contentment with that solitude, without which it is useless to think of arriving at intimate friendship with the Sacred Heart, or attaining the spirit of its hidden life.
Are we to suppose, from what has been said, that the Hidden Life of Jesus is impossible of reproduction in souls? This were far from being true, but owing to the infirmity of our nature, it requires constant and generous effort on our part to combat the weaknesses inherent to it. Such combat, however, cannot be maintained alone. We must unite ourselves to God in prayer, not simple prayer of vocal petitions, but rather in meditation upon the Life of our Lord Jesus Christ, and above all on such points in His Life as reveal to us the inner thoughts of His Sacred Heart.
Prayer gives knowledge, and knowledge calls forth love, and love moves to imitation of the object beloved. Yet more than this. He who loves is contented with the love of the Beloved - desires no other approval of his actions than His - no other sympathy in his sorrows, no other witness than Him of his victories and trials. Far from the souls who have once tasted the sweetness of the spirit of the Hidden Life will be complaint when they are forgotten, passed over, or neglected - far from them any restless craving for the notice or appreciation of others. They have learnt, or rather they have tasted and seen, how sweet a thing it is to live and suffer alone with Jesus. They know how to consecrate, unobserved by the world, their sufferings in His interests, and thus reproduce the Hidden Life of Jesus before the eyes of His Father. O souls, who reject so great a grace, and who, by your egotism and folly, place such barriers to your union with the Heart of the Hidden God of Nazareth, to you may truly be addressed those words of the Prophet: "Why do you spend money for that which is not bread, and your labour for that which doth not satisfy you? Hearken diligently... and eat that which is good, and your soul shall be delighted in fatness." (Isaias 54:2)
- 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