40 — HIDING WITH CHRIST IN GOD

Presence of God. — O Jesus, help me to hide from creatures so as to enter into Your divine intimacy.

Meditation

1 — When one speaks of Jesus’ hidden life, one must not understand only His hiding from men’s eyes by concealing His divinity and fleeing their glory, but, going beyond these external relations with creatures, one must penetrate into the secret of His Heart, where - hidden from every human gaze - another and far more sublime hidden life unfolds. It is His interior life, a life of intimate relations with the Trinity. Jesus’ most holy Soul, united personally to the Word, enjoys unceasingly the beatific vision: it sees the Word as subject of all its activity, sees the Father source of its being, sees the Holy Spirit dwelling in it as “in His preferred temple” and who, clothing it with the flame of His love, draws it into God, in full accomplishment of His will. Outwardly Jesus lives with men, deals with them, as one of them, but His true life, life of the Son of God, He lives - hidden from every human gaze - with the Trinity, in the Trinity. This is where, as to its ultimate goal, imitation of Jesus’ hidden life aims: to participate in His interior life, that is, to hide oneself “with Christ in God,” to penetrate with Him into the sanctuary of the most holy Trinity. This St. Teresa Margaret expressed in her ardent desire “to emulate by faith, as far as possible to a creature, the hidden interior life and actions of understanding and will, that is, the sublime knowledges and affections of the most holy Humanity of Jesus Christ, hypostatically united to the Word” (Sp. p. 374).

The practice of hidden life therefore has two aspects. The first, negative and predominantly exterior, which consists in hiding from others’ eyes and also from one’s own: it is dying to glory and earthly honors; the second, positive and wholly interior, which consists in concentrating in God, in a life of intimate relations with Him. The first aspect is the condition and measure of the second: the more the soul knows how to hide from creatures - and also from itself - the more capable it will be of living “with Christ in God,” according to St. Paul’s beautiful expression: “you are dead - that is, dead to the world and to its vanities - and your life is hidden with Christ in God” (Col. 3, 3).

2 — “My God... now forever I mean to shut myself within Your most lovable Heart as in a desert, there to make in You, with You, for You this hidden life of love and sacrifice.” Thus St. Teresa Margaret made concrete her ideal of hidden life with Christ. The soul that has long exercised itself in the exterior and negative aspect of hiddenness, that is, which with constant fidelity has known how to hide from creatures’ eyes, is free and ready to hide with Christ in God.

It no longer dissipates its energies seeking esteem or human satisfactions; from this point of view creatures have become a nothing for it, and it can well say that “created things, neither its own nor others’, no longer give it the least annoyance and hindrance, as though they did not exist at all” (T.M. Sp. p. 373), and for this it has attained that sovereign freedom of spirit that allows it to concentrate totally in God. Then its conduct presents nothing extraordinary; indeed its very care to hide from others’ eyes very often causes it to pass unnoticed, while most deem it a person of little account; but in the secret of its heart there unfolds a most rich interior life known to God alone. United to Jesus, in Him, with Him, for Him, it participates in His Trinitarian life. This means attaining fullness, the end of Christian life, because grace was given us precisely to make us participants in divine nature and therefore in divine life, in the life of God-Trinity. For this very end the Word was incarnate; Jesus, dying on the cross, merited grace for us, grafted us into Himself, to lead us back with Him into the bosom of the Trinity, from which by sin we had withdrawn. Thus we, not by our merit, not by our capacity, but only by being grafted into Christ can, with Him and through Him - our Mediator, our bridge, our way - penetrate into God’s intimate life, into Trinitarian life. Faith and charity, which Jesus merited for us together with grace, make us capable of entering relation with the three divine Persons, so that we can truly live “hidden with Christ in God.”

Life hidden in God is the great attraction of interior souls, and to attain it they are very glad to hide from their own and others’ eyes, fleeing every shadow of earthly splendor. Blessed hiddenness that introduces the soul into the “vita abscondita cum Christo in Deo”!

Colloquy

“Yes, O Jesus, to nothing else do I want to attend except to becoming Your perfect copy; and since Your life was nothing but a hidden life of humiliation, of love, of sacrifice, so from now on must mine be; therefore now forever I intend to shut myself within Your most lovable Heart as in a desert, there to make in You, with You, for You, this hidden life of love and sacrifice... And since You inspire my heart to make myself, as far as possible, in all things like You, to this my cares shall tend, and particularly I will imitate You in those virtues that so please Your most lovable Heart: humility... and purity of intention, both inwardly and outwardly, always operating in a spirit of simplicity” (T.M. Sp. p. 324).

O Jesus, deign to open also to me Your most sweet Heart and permit me to take refuge in it, to live with You hidden in God. Exterior life, life of display and earthly glory has no attraction for me any longer: is it not all vanity, all fleeting succession of circumstances that soon will be no more? The only life that draws me and will always remain, above every earthly contingency, is that of intimate union with God. And this is the great treasure that You offer me by the merits of Your Passion. I contemplate You on the cross, O Jesus, with breast opened by the lance as if to indicate to me that Your death has opened to me the doors of Your Heart, to admit me into the sanctuary of Your interior life. Your death, in fact, has grafted my poor human life into You to make it participant in Your divine life, life of intimate relations with the Trinity. This indeed is true life, lasting life, eternal life! And to this I aspire, not by my merits, but by the merits of Your Passion. O Jesus, grant that I seek my joy, my good, only in this participation in Your interior life, and that in it I place all my glory.

And may all my glory be within, in the secret of my life hidden with You in God.