The Hidden Life

Extract

The Christian life is pre-eminently a hidden life. This is a commonplace, but it seems difficult to grasp in our noisy time, which worships publicity and confuses activities with action. Yet God Himself has set before us the beauty and power of the hidden life when he chose to be born in a stable in an unknown tqwn of an obscure province of the Roman Empire, and to live in a carpenter’s family for thirty years. The devil, too, knew the strength of hiddenness, when he tempted our Lord with the prospect of spectacular success, the miraculous flight from the pinnacle of the Temple, the possession of all the kingdoms of the earth. But our Lord chose to hide himself on the Cross between two thieves, and thenceforth has remained hidden even more deeply and impenetrably under a little Bread and Wine: In Cruce latebat sola Deitas, At hic latet simul et humanitas. . . .

Yet, what power on earth has ever equalled the power of the Figure hidden and lifted upon the Cross and in the Mass? It is one of the scandals of Christianity, this mysterious hiddenness which the world ever derides: “ Is not this the carpenter’s son? Is not his Mother called Mary? . . . Whence therefore hath he all these things? And they were scandalized in him.” And he shares this hiddenness with his friends, and the nearer they are to him, the more they love to hide their lives with him in God.