Let us pay a final visit to the Holy House which in spirit we have visited during the course of these meditations, and once more contemplate the Divine Master amidst His daily toil. Let us look again at His weariness, His humility, and His subjection, together with all His interior sufferings, and let us then contemplate Him as He is glorious in His Kingdom, seated at the right hand of His Eternal Father, and receiving those who have merited to be of the number of His redeemed ones. Let us beg an intense and delicate appreciation of a hidden life which conducts to so glorious a recompense as we are about to consider.
Without penetrating too curiously into the various rewards laid up for the servants of God in eternity, or forming ideas regarding Heaven which probably have no reality in fact, we may certainly believe that special rewards are reserved for the different kinds of virtue which have been exercised upon earth in a more eminent degree by individual souls, as well as for the various services they have rendered to God and His Church, or the work they have wrought with a pure intention, or the sufferings which they have either submitted to or embraced for His love. Our Lord Himself distinctly implies this w T hen He announces that in His "Father's house there are many mansions."
Now, how great must the rewards be that are laid up for those who have faithfully endeavoured to reproduce the Hidden Life which the Word Incarnate led on earth during nearly the whole of His sojourn here below - that Life, inglorious indeed in the eyes of the world, unknown even to many of those who would appreciate it if they only knew of it, but very glorious indeed in the sight of God and His angels, even though reproduced so inadequately by such poor creatures as ourselves.
Let us weigh well the golden words of the Imitation of Christ, which so admirably depict a life hidden in God: That which is pleasing to others, shall prosper; that which thou wouldst have, shall not succeed; that which others say, shall be listened to; what thou sayest, shall not be regarded. Others shall ask, and shall receive; thou shalt ask, and shalt not obtain. Others shall be great in the esteem of men, but of thee no one will speak; to others this or that charge shall be committed, but thou shalt be accounted fit for nothing.... And yet consider, son, the fruit of these labours, their speedy end, and their exceeding great reward.... There I will give thee glory in return for the affronts which thou hast suffered; a garment of praise in recompense for thy sorrow; and instead of the lowest place, a royal throne for all eternity. There will the fruit of obedience be made manifest, there will the labour of penance rejoice, and humble subjection shall be crowned.
Happy are they who have understood in time the truth contained in the words which have been quoted. Every struggle they have sustained in secret for the love and glory of their Master shall then meet with its separate reward, every pang secretly endured shall have its own abundant recompense. Then shall hidden sorrows be transformed into everlasting joys, so much the greater according as the sorrows have been borne more silently in union with the Heart of Jesus. Then shall they who on earth have been humbled, forgotten, despised, shine like stars in the firmament of the triumphant Church. These are they who have tasted on earth all the bitterness of martyrdom without sharing in its glory; they have participated in the apostles' solicitudes and tears without sharing in the consolation, sometimes at least, attendant upon a visible apostleship; but it will be revealed, in the great unfolding day, how real was their long inward martyrdom, how efficacious was their hidden mission.
Let us, then, energetically resolve to subdue within ourselves the spirit of the flesh and of the world, so fatal an enemy to a hidden life, for thus shall we reproduce that life within us and merit the special blessedness prepared for its reward.
Although the end we propose to ourselves, in the imitation of our Lord's Hidden Life, ought scarcely to be centred in the reward assured to it hereafter, and certainly cannot be the primary thought in the mind of those whom the Holy Spirit has drawn into the ways of pure, disinterested love; nevertheless, it is beyond doubt permissible even for such, to encourage themselves, in seasons of desolation and trial, to persevere in the life of obscurity, subjection, and interior renunciation which a truly hidden life involves. They may recall to their minds the reward awaiting those who have been content to participate in the abasements of Jesus of Nazareth, and to feel that His love has been all-sufficient for them.
Without presumption, they may look up with the interior eye of their soul to the bright realms above them, and contemplate the place prepared for those who have imitated and shared in the Hidden Life of Jesus, a place so close to His Sacred Heart, because iii that Heart they made their dwelling-place by preference upon earth. They will listen to the Voice which has so often whispered to them in solitude during their exile here, and they will recognize its tones. That is the voice of Jesus of Nazareth, once crucified, now glorified, who will say to them: "Come, ye blessed of My Father." "You are they who have continued with Me in My temptations" (Saint Luke xxii. 28) - you have been contented to remain and suffer with Me in the obscurity of Nazareth. Come, ye martyrs of My Heart, receive the palm of your long secret martyrdom; come, ye hidden apostles, and receive the crown I bestow upon those who on earth have been consumed with zeal for the interests of My Heart; come, ye who, by your own silent imitation, have confessed before men the sublimity of My Hidden Life; come, ye virgin souls, who desire no other love than Mine, no other eye than Mine for the witness of your struggles and your sorrows; come, enter into the everlasting dwelling prepared for you - into My Sacred Heart - the abode you chose on earth, and which shall be your repose, your beatitude, your glory throughout eternity.
O Heart of Jesus of Nazareth, grant us to glorify Thee on earth by the imitation of Thy Hidden Life, that so we may glorify Thee eternally.
Nazareth
Nazareth! What volumes in a word,
What music in a name!
Thrilling the soul with memories
Which tenderest love must claim.
'Twas there for well-nigh thirty years
That dwelt Incarnate God;
Its fair green fields and sunny slopes
His Sacred Feet have trod.
O blessed spot! The chosen rest
Of Saints in every age;
The book in which the Sacred Heart
Shines forth on every page.
O Nazareth! To thy dear shade
Our weary spirits turn,
When restless trials make our hearts
Within us hotly burn.
When one by one shall fade away
The day-dreams of our youth,
We'll dream of thee, sweet Nazareth,
And Him - the Life - the Truth.
The beauty of that Heavenly Flower
Which bloomed upon thy hill,
Has never ceased to hallow thee,
Its perfume haunts thee still.
'Tis there we'll rest with Jesus then.
Far from the world apart,
And contemplate His loveliness,
And read His Sacred Heart.
- 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