by Boudreaux, Florentin, 1821-1894
His divine wisdom thought that three words would suffice for the history of thirty years of that life : but nothing less than divine wisdom could have thought so. It was the divine wisdom of the Sacred Heart, the wise love of the Sacred Heart, which would by this means teach us obedience, whilst it was, at the same time, atoning for our rebellion. Thirty years of a God’s life in the simple words : “ He was subject to His parents.” Our whole attention is centred on that single virtue. He did nothing during all those wonderful years but obey. The heavenly bodies moved at His beck; the seasons came and went at His bidding ; the earth was clad with circling plenty with the changing seasons; men and animals lived and died at His command ; all creation was clasped in His hand and was governed and sustained by His will during all those thirty years, as it had been ever since He had called it into existence. But all that is buried in silence, passed by, as if it were not worth the mention. One word alone is recorded, and it is recorded for our good : it is, Obedience; the obedience of God to His creatures for love of us. Nor is He obedient only to Joseph and Mary, whose peerless sanctity might in some measure have reconciled Him to the task, and whose gentle rule over Him was exercised with such fearfully humble reverence for His Divine Person. He subjects Himself to all who choose to command His services, harsh and heartless though they may be, loaded with the guilt of an ill-spent life, and therefore objects of abhorrence to His most pure eyes. He is subject to them also with the same perfect and cheerful obedience; because in them too he acknowledges the authority of God. How often, during those laborious years of His hidden life, was He employed with His foster-father, by the rude Nazarene's, receiving their orders, roughly spoken, no doubt, as to a poor, unskillful apprentice; listening to their directions, haughtily and imperiously dictated, and, during the progress of the work and at its completion, hearing their unkind judgements, their bitter reproaches, perhaps the unjust denial of His little, hard-earned pittance.
His Holy Father’s will thus came to Him in many a hideous disguise; but He recognised it in all, He adored it in whatever shape it appeared ; He fulfilled it with the same meek and cheerful fidelity. O what a heart is the Heart of Jesus ! What an abyss of wonderful subjection! In the midst of it is the law of God, the will of His Heavenly Father. He never resists, never rebels; He makes no claim of His own inherent rights ; He suggests no devices of His own ; He follows not His own wisdom, which would have astonished mankind by its works ; He exerts not His own power, which would have made all creatures pliant to His mere desire. He does what He is told, how He is told, when, where and how long. He does not omit one tittle ; He does not change one iota ; He does not fail for one moment. O wonderful Heart ! Who will ever fathom the depth of the mysteries concealed in thee ? Who will ever understand the nature, the extent, the value, the merit of thy obedience? Go into this interminable labyrinth, Christian soul ; wander about in those thirty years of mysterious concealment. It is a region of deepest wonder, but full of loveliness; the very heart of this Paradise of God : yet all its beauty, all its wealth, all its varied sweets, are told in one word : obedience. It is, moreover, a region of the calmest and most delightful happiness; because the will of God, which reigns there with supreme and unquestioned sway, is at all times amiable, adorably compassionate, most tenderly paternal in its rule : and it is this will alone that the Heart of Jesus sees in those whom it obeys. It hears always the fatherly voice of God in whatever is imposed by obedience; it submits to one and the same divine wisdom and power in the performance of every duty. There is then a constant, undisturbed peace and serenity, a cloudless joyousness, a fearless tranquillity. Come what may, it is God’s will, and His law is the delight of that Heart at all times and under all circumstances. The sunshine of that divine submission gilds the darkest sky and fringes the stormiest clouds with its own pure, soft, hopeful, and blissful glory. It is a perpetual rainbow which tells of God’s smiles upon the obedience of His Son; of the approving light of the divine countenance which beamed through the darkness of the hidden life, and which will ever beam through the pitiless storm of injustice, oppression, persecution unto death, to which the love of Jesus will submit for our sake, in obedience to that law which is in the midst of His Heart. The obedience of the Sacred Heart does not cease with the hidden life of our Lord. Had human wisdom been called into his council, it would, no doubt, have suggested the propriety of now, at least, laying aside every appearance of weakness and poverty and lowliness; it would have urged the important ends of the Incarnation: the manifestation of God’s truth to erring men, the establishment of God’s kingdom on earth; it would have alleged the inherent dignity of the Divine Person, who had deigned to honour the fallen world with His presence; and these would have seemed more than sufficient arguments for His taking upon Himself the outward majesty and glory which would have subjected the minds of all men to His dominion, and bound their hearts to His service. And human wisdom would have spoken well, according to its light. But, happily for us, the Sacred Heart followed only the impulse of its. own love for us, and, to teach us obedience, continued its own obedience to the end, and, instead of lessening it, increased it, deepened its wonder and its power, as well as its merit, until it disappears at last in the infinite abyss of obedience unto death, even the death of the cross. The birth of Jesus had been an act of obedience to the proud decree of Augustus, ordering all his subjects to be enrolled in the cities of their origin ; his death was to be an act of obedience to the iniquitous sentence of the Pagan Governor of Judea; and between these two acts of obedience there is an unbroken series of similar acts, an entire life spent in perfect submissiveness to all authority, whether lawful or usurped, justly or unjustly exercised, mildly or tyrannically exerted, wisely or unwisely ruling, so long as compliance with it did not involve an open transgression of that higher and more sacred law, the will of God, which reigned supreme in His Heart.
