THE
time had now come for an entire change in the external aspect of our
Lord's existence on earth. He was within four years of the time when
He was to offer Himself on the Cross as the Sacrifice for the sins of
the world. But before that great act could be accomplished, He had to
perform His work as the Teacher of the truth, the Revealer of His
Father, the Founder of the Church and of her marvellous system for
the salvation and perfection of mankind. Between the quiet years of
which we have last been speaking, the thirty years spent mostly in
Nazareth, and the actual Passion, there was to come the whole of the
wonderful period of activity and contradiction which we call the
Public Life of Jesus Christ. It is with this that the Gospel
histories are in the main concerned. Indeed, the simplest idea of a
Gospel, as we see it in the work of St. Mark, included nothing else,
except the Passion itself, and the shortest possible account of the
Resurrection. At His Ascension, our Lord left His earthly work to be
carried on by the Church under the guidance of the Holy Ghost, and a
new stage in the history of His Kingdom began.
It
was inevitable that during these three years and a half of His
Ministry our Lord could no longer be the inseparable companion of His
Blessed Mother. His Life was to be now a life of continual movement,
of great exposure to danger, of constant conflict. And besides, as
has already been seen, she was to give Him the opportunity, by His
con duct towards and treatment of her on particular occasions, of
setting to those who were to be His ministers, throughout all ages of
the world, His perfect example of detachment from home ties, from
parental influences, and the like, an example which would be much
needed by them, and which they could not have practised so well if
they had not had this instance of His own setting to look to for
light and for strength. It is on this account, as well as on that of
the hidden character of her occupations at this time, that we hear so
little of our Blessed Lady during the period which is covered by the
Gospel history properly so called. The later Evangelists were guided
to add the few precious details which we possess relating to the
Sacred Infancy and the Hidden Life, in which her part was necessarily
not only great, but conspicuous.
It
might perhaps turn out, if we knew the facts of the history more
fully, that the external separation of our Blessed Lord from His
Mother was neither so complete nor so uninterrupted as it may seem to
be on a cursory inspection of the sacred narrative. There are large
blanks in the history, and as to these it is at least as likely as
not that they included sojourns of His by the side of His Mother, of
which it was not the purpose of the Gospel writers to speak. But, in
any case, the external separation, whatever was its extent in point
of time, did not in any way imply a cessation of that close union of
heart and spirit which had been the rule of their lives during the
Thirty Years. It was not with our Lord and His Mother as it might be
with any good worker in the vineyard of the Church, who leaves his
home and family at the cost of a certain pang to his own affectionate
heart, but who has been accustomed by the years of his training for
the priesthood to live in a world of thoughts and interests and
aspirations to which the inmates of that home are more or less
strangers. He has his work in the world, and his brothers and sisters
have theirs, and his parents rejoice in his vocation, but cannot
enter into its cares or its hopes or its interests. It was not, as we
say, thus, with our Lord and His Mother. She could never be without
her work by the side of His, in companionship with Him. She had been
trained during all these years for a great post in His Kingdom, she
had a personal office and duty to discharge towards Himself, she had
functions towards those who were to belong to Him, which became only
more active and onerous and energetic and perpetual as His own work
among souls engrossed Him more and more. In order to understand this,
we have only to remind ourselves of what we have already considered
as to the advance of our Blessed Lady in grace and in intelligence of
the ways of God and of the character and plans of our Lord.
In
the first place, all that we know up to this time about our Blessed
Lady shows us that her life had become more and more, as time went
on, a life of prayer and the closest communion with God.
Her
immense increase in sanctity and in knowledge implied the expansion
of her intelligence and of her charity to an extent beyond what we
can conceive even in the highest Cherubim. Moreover, this great and
daily increase had been the fruit, not only of Divine illuminations
vouchsafed to her from time to time out of the wonderful bounty of
God Who loved her above all His works, but of her own most faithful
and energetic cooperation, and especially of that habit of mind of
hers which is commemorated in the Gospel, of pondering and praying
over all that happened, with regard to our Lord and herself, in the
gradual unfolding of the Divine plan for the dispensation of the
Incarnation. Her mind was cast in that mould, so to speak, of the
most careful, diligent, faithful contemplation and consideration, and
this is described for us as her great occupation, during these many
years which had now drawn to their close. And perhaps it may not be
without some special significance that she is said by the Evangelist
to have thought over these things in her heart rather than in her
mind, that we may understand that her contemplation and consideration
did not terminate in intellectual processes only, beautiful as those
must have been in such a mind and on such subjects, but that in her
meditation, as the Psalmist says, the fire of love was kindled into a
great flame, a flame of prayer and praise and outpourings of charity
to God and to man, so that her life had been, from the very beginning
of her participation in the mystery of the Incarnation, a life of
contemplation, praise, and intercession, following as closely as
possible the interior activity of the Soul and Heart of Jesus Christ
Himself.
We
have even reason to believe, further, that the intelligence of our
Lady had been enriched to a most marvellous extent by her constant
familiar intercourse with our Lord, especially during the Hidden
Life. The very familiarity of the few words which are recorded as
having passed between them shows how entirely He was in the habit of
communicating His designs and intentions to her. Christian reason
never employed itself more legitimately, more in harmony with what we
know of the character and the ways of God and our Lord with those
whom He trusts and loves, than when it came to the conclusion that
our Lord communicated most fully to His Mother the outlines and
principles and even the details of the system of His Church, the
darling project of His Sacred Heart, and large portions at least of
the history of what was to ensue. It would have been unlike Him, as
far as we can see, if He had not done this. There may be a question
as to the manner in which this revelation was made. For there are
some contemplatives who consider that some preternatural method for
her enlightenment as to these matters was used in the case of our
Lady, as it has been used from time to time in the history of the
Church in the dealings of God with His saints. Others are content to
think that the revelation may have been made to her, as it was
probably made to the Apostles after the Resurrection, from our Lord's
own lips and in His own gracious and tender words. It is enough for
us to know that Mary must have entered on the period of the Public
Life with this immense treasure in her heart, the subject of her
rapturous contemplations and most fervent prayers.
We
have already seen that there may have been more than one reason why
our Blessed Lady may have been thus enlightened, but it may be well
here to remind ourselves of these reasons, or at least of some of
them. The great plan of God, the most wonderful and beautiful of His
works in Creation, the work in which His most glorious attributes
were to shine forth more conspicuously than elsewhere, certainly
required an acknowledgement and a homage and a praise from His
intelligent creatures, as far as possible, worthy of itself. This
homage and praise and gratitude were secured to it by its
communication to the most faithful and intelligent heart of the
Blessed Mother. She could penetrate it and under stand it as no one
else, she could give it its meed of adoring thanksgiving as no one
else. Again, it was in the order of the dispensation of the
Incarnation that our Lord should have by His side a heart capable of
understanding Who He was, what was the dignity of His Person, what
the endowments of His Humanity, what He was doing, what He was to do,
of sympathizing with Him, entering into His wishes and desires,
echoing the infinite charities and mercies and bounties which He was
continually pouring forth. There was to be in this sense a second Eve
by the side of the second Adam, of whom it might be said that she was
a helpmate like Himself, and this all the more, as among the clearest
previsions of the Sacred Heart was that which fore-showed to Him the
ingratitude and neglect and coldness of those for whom all these
miracles of love, all these inventions of wisdom, were to be brought
about.
It
was due also to the Blessed Mother herself that she should have this
knowledge with regard to the work which had been begun with her
consent and cooperation, and that the immense perfection of holiness
and intelligence to which she was to rise should be built up by these
considerations of the noblest works of God on which mind and heart
could be occupied. Especially was it due to her that her mind and
heart should be most largely stored with intelligence as to our
Lord's office, character, virtues, designs, tastes. She was to be
especially for Him, and He for her. And it was well for us also, as
she was to be to us all that she was to be, that she should possess
this perfect intelligence of the blessings which were to be applied
to us, in so large a measure, by her powerful and watchful
intercession for us.
It
is very clear that the Public Life, on which we are now entering, was
a time of our Lord's sojourn upon earth, in which the many great
features of His character and office were manifested with a
brilliancy and rapidity which were not found in other stages. For
then He came forth like a giant to run His course, as the Psalmist
sings, to deal with men in every state of spiritual misery or
well-being, to work on every side of Him, with an activity which He
Himself compared to the unwearying and incessant work of His Father
in the Universe. 1 It is by the working of God in the Universe
and in Providence that we come to know many of the features of His
Divine Character, and if our Lord had never worked as He did among
men a great number of His characteristics would have remained
unrevealed. Volume on volume has been written by theologians and
spiritual writers on the revelations of Himself made by our Lord in
the narratives of the four Evangelists. But the Evangelists have
preserved for us only a few crumbs, so to say, of a great banquet,
which was being spread day after day for the crowds who flocked to
hear Him, or for the friends who were nearest to Him. But the crowds
shifted and changed, one set of hearers or petitioners succeeded to
another, none lingered long or saw and heard Him for a length of
years. Those to whom it was given to be more constantly His
companions did not, for the greater portion even of the Public Life,
fully realize Who He was, and thus they lacked the fundamental know
ledge which was required for understanding Him. No one but Mary could
be alive to the fullness and beauty of the revelations He was
continually making, and give Him the honour and the gratitude due to
Him in each of the various relations to us in which He displayed His
wisdom, His mercy, His love. If this was her office in the kingdom of
the Incarnation, there was no time at which its exercise was more
requisite than this.
It
would thus seem to be out of harmony with what we know of the
dealings of God with her, and of His designs regarding her, to
suppose that when the moment came for our Lord to leave her side for
the commencement of His Public Life His Blessed Mother should have
had to lay aside her habits,whether of devout contemplation of His
acts and words, leading to adoration and thanksgiving, or of prayer
and intercession and active cooperation, in the way in which she
could cooperate, in the new phase of His great work in which, if she
had only been the greatest and dearest of His saints, she must have
been most deeply interested. But we have seen enough to make us think
that her position in the Kingdom which He was to found was something
more even than this, that is, that she was to have a part in the
carrying out of the designs of God, as she had had an active share in
bringing about the Incarnation on which they were all founded. We
notice this office of our Blessed Lady in the mystery of the
Visitation. We shall notice it again in the first great display of
miraculous power in the mystery of the wedding feast at Cana, which
was not only the first of His .great signs, but the beginning of His
instruction and formation of His Apostles, and we shall find her
finally taking her place by the side of the Cross, and addressed
there by our Lord in words that contain a clear reference to this
association of hers in the .great mystery which was then being
accomplished.
These
things taken together make us expect to find that she has a part of
her own in the Public Life of her Son, as well as in the years which
preceded it, and in the years which followed on it. When St. John and
St. James left their mother Salome, .and when the other leading
disciples left their own homes and families to follow our Lord, it is
need less to suppose that those whom they left behind them occupied
themselves directly in any exclusive manner with the work to which
their children or kinsmen had thus devoted themselves. The homes they
had abandoned went on as usual without them, and it is not necessary
to suppose that the thoughts of their inmates were entirely engrossed
with the proceedings of those who had left them for the new work of
the Gospel. But we cannot think this of our Blessed Lady. She lived
only for the interests and work of her Son, and she had been divinely
enriched by ever fresh accumulations of grace and knowledge, in order
that she might be the better enabled to bear her share in the great
enterprise which occupied Him. And besides, we gather that when He
left Nazareth for Capharnaum, she and His "brethren" went
with Him. No intimation of this sort can be without a meaning in the
Gospels. We understand this to mean, that for some Divine purpose,
her home was to be within reach of Him.
After
the feeding of her mind and heart on the new wonders which were
continually presented to-them, the part which we may be sure was
borne by our Lady in the work of the Gospel preaching is the part to
which she had already to a great extent devoted herself during the
Hidden Life of her Son. We do not need any direct statement of the
Evangelists to tell us that she was engaged now in that occupation
which had always been her delight, and in which she is employed when
for the last time her name is mentioned by any of the New Testament
writers after the Ascension. That is, her occupation was prayer. It
was the will of God that prayer should hold an immense office in the
Kingdom of our Lord throughout all time, that it should be one of the
normal and regular forces in the Kingdom, as much so as the sunshine
or the rain in the growth of the corn, or in the unfolding of the
flowers of the field. If the working of these natural and normal
forces in any part of the universe of God is not continually
mentioned in history, it is because it is taken for granted, and men
do not need to be continually reminded of what is elementary and
continual. When this working ceases for a time for some special
cause, the cessation is mentioned and its disastrous effects
chronicled. It can only be because we underrate the power and
importance of the mighty forces of prayer in the Church that we can
ever think of them as inoperative and inactive, •or that we require
to be perpetually reminded that they are not so.
It
may, therefore, be safely and naturally concluded, concerning the
occupations of the Blessed Mother of God during the Public Life, that
they may be summed up generally in the statement that she was ever
devoutly watching our Lord's work and actions, ever contemplating Him
under the new relations in which He showed Himself, and ever pouring
out her heart in prayer and intercession. As she had learnt to make
the successive mysteries of the Holy Infancy, and the classes of men
whom those mysteries brought successively before her, the subjects of
prayer and intercession, as she had during the Hidden Life learnt to
pray most fervently for the accomplishment of the designs and plans
of God in the foundation and formation of the Church, so when our
Lord went forth from her side for the work of His Ministry, she
turned her heart and mind with all their power and their illumination
to the work of helping on, by this most necessary means, the progress
of this great work. From time to time she appears, even in the scanty
record of these years, and at other times we are not certain that she
is absent, as for instance when the holy women are mentioned as
ministering to the sustenance of our Lord and the Apostles. There may
also have been, as has been said, occasions when our Lord returned to
her for awhile, and when the occupations of the Hidden Life may have
been to some extent resumed in His communing with her. It is not easy
to suppose that she w r as kept in ignorance of any of the designs
which He formed, or the counsels which He adopted under the shifting
circumstances of His career. Such communications would be natural
between our Lord and His Mother, and they would add immense light and
energy to her prayers. But as for the ordinary occupation of this
period as far as our Lady is concerned, we are safe in saying of her
that prayer was her great employment, and that in her was begun that
great work, which is always going on in the Church, and which forms
the whole of the life and the whole of the work of many of her most
serviceable children, the work of perpetual intercession, which is
often more powerful with God than the labours of apostles themselves,
the prudence of the governors of the Church, or the studies of her
doctors. It is prayer that brings strength to those who have to fight
and toil, wisdom and light to those who have to rule, patience to
those who have to suffer, courage and endurance to those who have to
bleed. It is the life of the whole militant Church, turning away from
it the anger of God, which is often kindled by its shortcomings, and
shielding it from a thousand snares and assaults on the part of its
spiritual enemies. No one who has to work for God can afford to
neglect it for him self. But it finds in hundreds of souls, who are
not called to active labours in the work of the ministry, its own
most efficient and active labourers, who may console themselves with
the thought that they are the followers in this holy toil of the
Blessed Mother of God herself.
It
is very natural that those contemplatives who have loved especially
to feed their souls on the contemplation of Mary as occupied
unintermittently in this holy exercise, should have asked themselves
whether there was not some singular and preternatural provision in
the tender dispositions of God by which, when absent from our Lord,
she may have been aware of what was passing in His Heart, or
happening to Him externally. The same kind of question occurs at an
earlier time also, for it may be asked, when our Lord was in the womb
of His Mother, whether she could not have had revealed to her His
thoughts and affections, in order that she might copy them and echo
them, and in the same way whether, before He began to speak to her
after the Nativity, she might not have been enabled to penetrate His
thoughts and hold interior converse with Him. It need hardly be again
repeated that a soul and heart which had been so long devoted to the
thought of Him alone, which had studied Him and all His ways for so
long a period of years, which had learnt so perfectly the whole
character and prospects of the work on which He was now to engage
Himself, must even without more have been wonderfully apt in divining
His thoughts and sharing all His intentions and interests. We shall
see this in the marriage-feast of Cana, where our Lady dis plays so
marvellous a power of understanding His design and interpreting His
words.
Not
all can understand the footing, if we may use the word, on which our
Lady was with her Son, and without this intelligence, there will
always be different ways of answering questions of this kind. Some
holy writers tell us that our Lady habitually read the thoughts and
affections of the Sacred Heart, though perhaps there may have been
occasions in which it was more for the glory of God that she should
be for a time ignorant in some particular matter, such as that of the
reason for His remaining behind in Jerusalem at the age of twelve. It
is certain that some amount of intimate knowledge must have been
necessary for the perfect discharge of the great duty of prayer,
praise, and intercession which was especially committed to her at
this time. And we find in the histories of His dealings with the
saints and chosen souls, who have had to continue our Lady's work in
this respect, that He has been constantly very large in the measure
in which He has imparted to such souls the knowledge which they could
not possess, except by revelation, of what should be the subject of
their prayers. These considerations may at least show us that there
is nothing unreasonable in the supposition that our Blessed Lady was
allowed in this way also a marvellous degree of companionship with
the Sacred Heart of her Son. Many devout hearts will go beyond this.
They will say to themselves that what our Lord has done with others
in the way of these most tender communications of Himself, is an
intimation to us of what He would certainly do, far more perfectly
and continuously, with His Mother, whose heart was so much more able
to understand Him and so much fuller of love for Him than the hearts
of all the world beside.
1
St. John 5:17
