It’s been said that we don’t choose our patron saints—they choose us. This is certainly…
The Treasure of Hiddenness
“Be intent on things above rather than on things of earth. After all, you have died! Your life is hidden now with Christ in God. When Christ our life appears, then you shall appear with him in glory” (Col. 3:2).
I once heard a high school graduation speech I’ll never forget. The shy yet quietly centered young valedictorian stepped up to the mic: “Most speakers in my role urge their classmates to envision the big things they can do to change the world,” she began. “I am here to challenge you to value the small things we do that change the world.” She went on to describe her volunteer work at a Good Will, where her job was to clean the pockets of donated winter coats. “I found a surprise settling in, a sense of real privilege. Every used Kleenex I removed allowed me to give dignity to someone who could not afford a new coat.” I was moved by her understanding of the holy ground she stood on amidst such hidden tedium. She was turning the “norm” on its head.
Such is our invitation from St. Paul. “Be intentional,” he all but pleads. “You have died with Christ to old ways of seeing. You are in Him, and in Him you have a whole new way of perceiving reality! Every circumstance of your life carries divine dimension. Do not waste a minute in the land of ho-hum; nothing is mundane. Everything counts. Every nano-second of the circumstances God allows contributes to our “being built…into a temple sacred to the Lord” (Eph. 2:21). Every trip to the grocery store. Every frustration to our agenda–the cash register down and the person ahead of us fumbling for a workable card–every tedious unpacking of the bag that just ripped…. With each chafe, no matter how minor, something is being forged within us of pure gold. How all of this works in the Divine Economy is not ours to know. Its meaning is mercifully hidden from us; the life-in-Christ which is growing within happens under the radar of our cognition so that we can “become again as little children” in our trust and abandonment. Because Jesus, helpless in his love for us, entered our condition and joined it to himself, everything in our orbit becomes potential for his promised “life, and life to the full” since we are in union with Him.
Today at Mass, as I asked the Holy Spirit to give words to the tide I was experiencing, I heard so clearly, “Treasure your hiddenness.” This vocabulary is not unfamiliar to us Catholics. We cut our teeth on Jesus’ “hidden life in Nazareth,” grew to marvel at the Godhead hidden in Mary’s womb and the Lord of the Universe invisible within His broken, bloodied body on a cross. Our source and summit is the majesty of God hidden in a tiny host. We have countless examples in the Saints–St. Joseph, not only under wraps in Scripture, but within the Church for centuries; little Therese, the missionary to the world hidden in her cloister; Teresa of Calcutta, whose fifty-year “dark night” surely kept her life “hidden now with Christ in God.” Our Blessed Mother leads the parade of powerhouses, those who, living quiet lives of utter trust, offered no resistance to the stretching, the honing, the sanctifying, the conforming-to-Christ which the Holy Spirit worked in their souls through their moment-to-moment circumstances.
Our call is no different, yet how aware we are of our resistance to the pain of the “mini-deaths” which present themselves so constantly. Father Jean D’Elbee, in his retreat on little Therese, I Believe in Love, assures us so tenderly:
It should be the fruit of your disposition of will, of heart, and of soul to bless Jesus for everything that He wills or permits for you…. Promise always to say to Him, “I thank you for everything.” You may answer, “I am going to make this promise, but I know that I shall not keep it. After a trial, a contradiction, a humiliation…, feeling my nature revolt, it will seem like a lie to say, ‘Thank you.’” All right, then! Promise Him, at the same time, to say “Thank you for not having said ‘Thank You’ right away.” It is still another humiliation…a misery to offer Him with humility and confidence…. How rich this little prayer is! How it glorifies Jesus! Each time you say it, it reaffirms your disposition of love for Him in total abandonment. It sinks you into His heart.
His heart, the very place where “my life is hidden now with Christ in God”…. It is our willingness to humble ourselves to allow the flood of his love to penetrate us–in every circumstance–that makes us powerhouses. We have no idea what this hidden work of the Holy Spirit effects in us! “I will lead the blind on their journey” (Is 42:16). Every so often we might get a glimpse–I know that on days when I can feel dreariest in spirit, someone crosses my path who touches my heart, and I am startled by the sudden, warm smile that lights up my face for him or her, certainly out of no place I’m conscious of. “Oh, it’s You within me, Lord!” I’ll realize. This is an interior work, and “inside job,” of which we are most often cognitively unaware. “He slumbers not nor sleeps” within us, just as with our physiological processes–our hearts pumping blood or our kidneys doing their job. “Not I, but Christ in me,” forging His heart more deeply in mine through every circumstance of my life, opened to His love. A powerful secret in slow motion, something only He and I share yet only He is privy to, this grandeur building within when all I’m aware of is my poverty.
More astoundingly, this powerful secret, His and mine, expands in infinite dimension. “May the Lord accept the sacrifice at your hands, for the praise and glory of His name, for our good, and the good of all His holy Church,” we pray at Mass, uniting all our immolations to Jesus’ for the salvation of the world. Hidden from our eyes is the soul in Purgatory released by our blessing the slow-poke driver ahead of us, the abortion allayed by our forgiving a slight, a hardened heart softened by our “thank you” for a brutally hot day. Father D’Elbee encourages us,
Thank Him every day for the souls which you save, without knowing it, by your acts of love…instead of saying to Jesus, “Give me souls,” say to Him, “I thank You for the souls which You give me simply because I am sure that You give them to me,” relying on His own words: “All things, whatsoever you ask when you pray, believe that you have already received them, and they shall come unto you” (Mk. 11:24). Know how to unite yourself with the miracles He works in you continually, even when you do not realize and are not aware of it. “Jesus, I unite myself to the wonders You work in me. I know for certain that I love You today more than yesterday and that tomorrow I shall love You more than today, because I have opened my heart to Your grace, which is a torrent which ceaselessly engulfs me and continually transforms me into Yourself and spreads out to others.”
And when this “torrent” hides? When spiritual numbness prevails? A meditation of Father Donald Haggerty’s in this month’s Magnificat rang bells. “The inclination to hiddenness is a quiet mark of holiness,” he writes. “It corresponds to the secrecy of relations between a soul and God. For it seems to be God’s consistent habit with souls to conceal himself even when they are closest to him…. Rather than frustrating them, the divine hiding provoked them with intense longings. And it aroused in them a desire for their own concealment, not from God but from the eyes of others, so that they might remain among the unknown and the unrecognized. If we want to find holiness, the first place to search is in the shadows and corners.”
So many faces of hiddenness, all concealing so much splendor. “When Christ our life appears, we shall appear with Him in glory,” all the secrets He and I have shared, and their impact, revealed. Dear Jesus, we need your grace to treasure hiddenness in whatever form it takes. Help us to see the grandeur in the “shadows and corners” of our lives, in the unique ways you invite us to take used Kleenex out of worn pockets so that your Kingdom may come. Remind us that every chafe to our systems brings your promise, “I lay your pavements in carnelians, your foundations in sapphires” (Is. 54:1). Open our eyes to holy paradox–things are not what they seem. Let us live in the big picture. Fill us with joy, because everything counts. Amen.
Bonnie West – Copyright 2024
Related Posts
What a wonderful reminder of the beauty of our hiddenness. I especially loved the quote from graduation. Thank you Bonnie.
This is beautifully encouraging, when all I can offer is my poverty, my nothingness, my mistakes and clumsiness. All is transformed by Him receiving them. Hidden but radiant. Little but powerful. St Teresa of Calcutta encouraged her daughters and us all, when we find ourselves not being able to bring anything to prayer, when all is sleepiness, or distraction, when we find that after a holy hour we have nothing, to turn to Him and offer that nothing. And He transforms it into Holiness.