As
we are told nothing about the actual beginning of the Public Life of
our Lord, whether He left the home at Nazareth abruptly, or after
warning and preparation of some kind, we are sometimes inclined to
think that our Lady was suddenly left alone, as she had been when our
Lord tarried in Jerusalem. It is probable, however, that if there had
been any such abruptness on this occasion, there would have been some
notice of it, if not in the Gospels, at least in Christian tradition.
For such an incident would have furnished devout souls with another
subject for their contemplations of the sorrows of the Blessed
Virgin. It seems most reasonable to think that our Lord's departure
from Nazareth was not abrupt. There is great probability in the
contemplation that, for some time before the actual commencement of
the Public Life, He had not only prepared His Mother for it, but that
He had also done many things which might have prepared the minds of
others in His immediate neighbourhood for the beginning of His
preaching. It is very likely that He gradually went more into public
as the time drew nigh, and that He might have held many
conversations, such as that which He is supposed by some
to have held in the Temple on the last-named occasion, when He
engaged the Scribes in discussion about the coming of the Messias, or
about the signs of His Person. This is all the more probable when we
consider that our Lord did not go forth from Nazareth to join St.
John Baptist on the Jordan till the ministry of His Precursor had
attained great notoriety and influence. We can hardly think that less
than four or five months would have sufficed to give the preaching of
St. John this great fame, which drew to him on the banks of the
Jordan so large a portion of the population. But our Lord and our
Lady must have been aware of this preaching from the very first, even
if St. John did not, as we are told by some, give them some formal
intelligence before he began to preach, begging our Lord's blessing
and our Lady's prayers.
In
any case, the beginning of the preaching of St. John must have set
before our Blessed Lady a new and most important subject for her
constant intercessions. A great movement was now to begin, great
streams of grace were to be shed down from Heaven, a great saint was
commissioned to preach the Word of God for a special purpose, no less
a purpose than that of introducing to the chosen people the
long-promised Kingdom of Heaven. The messenger had long been prepared
for his task, and no doubt during his preparation he had been the
object of much tender solicitude and earnest prayer on the part of
the Blessed Mother. Now he would need strengthening, enlightening,
encouraging, the powerful guidance and support of the Holy Ghost for
his great work, and for his continual perseverance and advance in the
interior perfection which was his best qualification for his mission,
his humility, his disinterestedness, his fervent zeal, his boldness,
his tender consideration for souls.
The
people who were to come to him would also need fervent prayer that
they might be enabled to correspond interiorly to the great external
grace of his preaching, and by means of a true conversion be made fit
for the reception of our Lord. It was the first great Christian
missionary enterprise, and our Lady now began that mighty work of
intercession for its success which is the continual occupation of a
number of chosen souls in the Church whose names are unknown to men,
but whose prayers bring down on the unconscious missioner the grace
which makes his words powerful, and on the listening throngs the
ineffable blessing of a faithful reception of the Word of God. It is
often the characteristic of such souls, that these desires and
petitions increase in compass and in intensity, and the prayer that
begins for a single holy work of this kind extends itself till it
enfolds the whole missionary enterprise of the Church in all time,
whether among her own children or those outside her frontiers. Such
we may suppose to have been the prayer of Mary on this occasion. And
the mission of St. John in itself would present to her thoughtful
mind many considerations as to the wisdom and gentle methods of God,
Who did not send His Son at once without preparing the people for
Him, and Who so largely uses ministrations which do not directly
belong to the system of the Church, as auxiliary and subordinate to
her own workings upon souls.
After
a certain number of months had passed from the beginning of St.
John's mission, the time arrived for our Lord Himself to begin His
work in a different way. He was to go to the Jordan where St. John
was baptizing 1 There He was to receive in the utmost humility
the Baptism of the Precursor, sanctioning and sanctifying it thereby,
and in the mystery of His own Baptism the great manifestation of the
Ever Blessed Trinity was to take place, in which the Holy Ghost was
to descend on Him in the form of a dove, and the voice of the Father
was to be heard from Heaven, declaring Him to be His Beloved and
only-Begotten Son. We do not dwell here on the theological meaning of
this mystery, of its connection with the Christian sacrament of
Baptism which is founded upon it, and which, as so founded, confers
on us the grace of the adoption of sons. But we can see in this part
of the story the great occasions which were furnished to our Blessed
Lady of the most heroic and beautiful virtue. In the first place, she
now gave up, formally and solemnly and willingly, her own most dear
Son, the companion of her life, the only support of her bereavement,
for the work which was now the "business of His Father."
That our Lady knew Who He was so perfectly, and why He had been given
her as her Son, did not in any way blunt the tenderness of her most
intense love for His Person, or make the wound of separation less
sensible to her heart. Her great and even joyful sacrifice must have
been of boundless merit in the sight of God, and have brought down on
her a fresh increase of her mighty graces. And in her office of
intercessor for the children of the Church, she may well be thought
to have prayed for the blessing of absolute resignation and joyful
cooperation in all such decrees of Providence, by which parents
surrender their dearest children for the service of the great Father
and Master of all, acknowledging therein His supreme dominion, His
infinite consideration for His creatures, and the immense rewards in
this life and in the next which He has prepared for those who thus
give up to Him what belongs to Him indeed, but what He has lent to
them.
Moreover,
our Lady must have learnt from our Lord in His conversations with
her, the importance and necessity of a conversion of heart and
contrition for sin, as the foundations of all spiritual life, and
also from what He had told her concerning the Christian sacraments,
the value and efficacy of that one of them which is particularly
connected with the sacred mystery which had now been consummated on
the banks of the Jordan. Although it is not quite certain at what
time Christian Baptism was actually and formally instituted, it is
certain that it is founded on the Baptism of our Lord, Who then, as
the Fathers say, consecrated the element of water for its use in His
own sacrament, and that the manifestation of the Ever Blessed Trinity
on that occasion, as well as the special declaration that our Lord in
His Human Nature was the Beloved Son of God, had reference to the
blessings which are conferred on the baptized. Thus the Baptism of
our Lord would bring before the mind of His Mother the Divine boon
which was to be offered to the whole race of mankind, superseding the
holy rite of circumcision, which did not of itself confer grace, and
the rite, whatever it was, by which the female sex was admitted to
privileges like those of circumcision, and conferring the grace of
cleansing from all sin, original and actual, as well as all the other
positive spiritual gifts with which the soul is then endowed, making
it a child of God by adoption, and sealing it with a Divine and
indelible character. All these things would be subjects of most
devout praise and thanksgiving to the Blessed Mother, who was, as is
generally believed, herself to receive this great sacrament from our
Lord at the time of their next meeting. But she would expand her
heart and stretch her thanksgiving, so as to include all that God
intended to be conveyed when He determined to institute this great
sacrament of regeneration and adoption, all its effects on souls in
time and in eternity. She would thank Him not only for those whom it was actually to reach, but for all those also for whom the gift was
intended, though by human misery and negligence they may have been
deprived of its inestimable blessings.
Immediately
on the mystery of the Baptism followed that of the Fasting and
Temptation of our Lord in the desert. 2 It does not seem
reasonable to suppose that our Blessed Lady was not made aware of all
that was passing amid those lonely rocks of Quarantana, either by
warning beforehand from our Lord, or by some interior communication
at the time. This mystery was altogether hidden from the world, and
it might have been thought that the Christ had suddenly vanished from
the public sight as soon as He had been proclaimed so solemnly. In
truth, the work wrought and the victory won by our Lord in those
forty days were of incalculable greatness and importance, more than
if He had gone half over the world, and converted a score of nations.
For the work and the victory of the Fasting and Temptation could have
been performed and achieved by no one but Himself, and their effects
last on through all time, and are powerful in thousands of souls
every day and every hour. It was then that exterior mortifications
were consecrated by His touch, and endowed with the wonderful powers,
especially for the subjugation of the lower man, the expiation of
former faults, the impetration of graces and virtues and strength
against the enemy of souls, which they have ever since possessed, and
which are constantly in play in Christian conflicts everywhere. It
was then, especially, that the power of Satan for the seduction and
perversion and destruction of souls was enormously weakened, and the
triumphs over him of the weakest children of the Church amply
secured. This was the subject, then, of the contemplations and
intercessions of Mary at this time, of her thanksgivings to God for
the ineffable magnitude of the gift to us in this mystery, as in the
previous boon of the Baptism, and of most ardent prayer for our
faithfulness in the use and exercise of these mighty boons. Our Lord
had shown Himself, moreover, under new circumstances in this mystery,
for He had condescended to allow Himself to be tempted, and He left
behind Him, in the record of His dealings with the enemy of souls,
the most perfect pattern and instruction for all His children under
similar trials. Here was something new for the thanksgivings of His
Blessed Mother.
We
are told by some contemplatives that our Lady now began to exercise
her office of Mother and refuge of the afflicted, especially of the
afflicted by the temptations and molestations of the Evil One. She
had herself great experience of the assaults of the devils, although
it is true that the attacks which they were allowed to make on her,
which seem to have been very violent and furious, were not like those
from which we suffer, inasmuch as her soul, having always been
entirely free from original sin, had in it none of the inherent
weakness and disorder which enables the evil spirits to stir us up
against ourselves, and bring on that interior conflict of which St.
Paul draws the picture in the Epistle to the Romans. And the great
conflict which her Divine Son now undertook, and His victory over
Satan, would make it natural for our Lady to pray most earnestly that
the strength which He then won for us might be faithfully used in our
own struggles against the same malignant foe, who was indefinitely
weakened and humiliated by the calm dignity and ease with which our
Lord baffled all his wiles and put him to flight.
We
are also told that this was one of the occasions on which our Lady
kept company with our Lord in the actions He was performing, besides
discharging her office as intercessor and giver of thanks. For she
shut herself up during these forty days, to spend them in her own way
in mortification and prayer, inasmuch as these great weapons of
Christian warfare were now specially consecrated by our Lord. Thus
she handed on His example to the Church, which was to bear these
practices in eternal honour, not only for the conquest of the
disorders which are bred in our souls by their innate weakness and by
the too ready indulgence which they have yielded to the lower parts
of our nature, indulgence which renders mortification absolutely
necessary both for virtue and for interior peace, but also a most
powerful instrument of expiation for past faults, of progress in
virtue, of multiplication of good works, and as the condition of a
life of prayer, intercession, impetration, and above all, of
imitation of our Blessed Lord. All these truths our Lady perfectly
understood, and the penance now done by our Lord afforded her the
natural occasion for imitation of Him therein.
During
the time of the forty days spent by our Lord in the desert, it seems
that His Blessed Precursor was visited by the deputation from the
ecclesiastical authorities in Jerusalem of which his namesake the
Evangelist tells us. 3 This marks an important point in the
history of the movement, as we should say, which had been set on foot
by the Baptist. For it was now that it became finally plain and
certain that his mission would not be accepted by the Chief Priests
and Scribes. They sat in the seat of Moses, and held immense
influence over the minds of the people. They were afraid to oppose
St. John openly, for they feared the great power which he wielded
among the multitudes. But his preaching was distasteful to them, both
because it was a shock to their pride that any one should teach with
so much authority and success without their sanction, and also
because their lives were too corrupt, from ambition, avarice, and
sensuality, to relish so plain a call to repentance and amendment of
life. St. John had already had some of the Pharisees among his
hearers, and had spoken to them with characteristic boldness, putting
his finger on the very danger of spiritual pride which we find in
them at a much later time, during the preaching of our Lord. 4
The
formal mission to St. John was a half measure, and they might have
acted more openly against him if they had dared. The blessed Baptist
spoke of him self with the utmost humility, and took the opportunity
to utter his solemn witness to our Lord, Whom he had lately baptized,
and Whom he declared to be the true baptizer in the Holy Ghost. There
were many things which would suggest the intercessions of our Lady,
whether for the perfect faithfulness of the witness whom God had
chosen, or for the poor deluded souls of these Chief Priests and
Scribes, who were now entering decidedly on the path of resistance to
God's Providential designs which was to lead them within so short a
time to the most determined opposition to our Lord Himself. The
greatest evils in the Church may be the work of some among her chief
ministers, who have in their hands, in consequence of their position,
so much power, either for the furtherance or the hindrance of the
good works which God desires to see carried out. The purity of
intention, the personal disinterestedness, and reluctance to accept
for himself the slightest honour, which were displayed by St. John,
must have furnished our Lady with subjects of ardent thanks giving,
contrasting so beautifully as they did with the self-seeking of the
Chief Priests.
After
this witness of St. John, we find him pointing out our Lord to a few
of his own chosen disciples. 5 Our Lord returned from the
desert after the Temptation to the scene of St. John's baptizing, and
then it was that the beautiful and significant name of the Lamb of
God was first applied to Him by His Precursor. It was then that He
spent a few days in gathering around Him the first of His Apostles,
St. Andrew and St. Peter, possibly St. James and St. John, with St.
Philip and St. Bartholomew or Nathanael. The manner in which each
soul was brought to Him, and in which He dealt with each, was
different, and we have thus a first glimpse of the peculiar
tenderness, gentleness, and discrimination with which He ordinarily
dealt and deals with souls. This careful and delicate method was to
pass on from Him to all who were to have in the Church the function
of attracting, converting, and forming souls one by one, whether as
directors or superiors, and we can hardly be wrong in thinking that
our Blessed Lady was enabled to follow it and delight herself in it,
while her appreciation of it would lead her to pray most fervently
for those who were to exercise this branch of the pastoral or
quasi-pastoral office in the Church, as well as those who were to be
the objects of their labours. Here is a whole world of wonderful
beauties of grace, into which we can never enter fully until the time
of the manifestation of all things. It came into being under the
hands of our Lord Himself, and the Apostles, as we can see in their
Epistles, followed Him in their careful administration of the power
and influence committed to them. It must last on in the Church till
the end of time, as the subject of much earnest intercession for all
those who fill the office which our Lady was now discharging, by her
prayers for the success of this work in souls.
Thus,
within a few days of His great but unseen triumphs over Satan, our
Lord was surrounded by a little group of the souls which, as He
afterwards said, were given Him by His Father. He could know their
future labours and crowns, and rejoice in all the work which His
grace was to produce in them. He could tell Simon that he was to be
called Peter, He could declare Nathanael to be an Israelite without
guile, and to promise to him and his companions that they should see
the heavens opened and the Angels of God ascending and descending on
the Son of Man. Everything, in these first days of the Public Life,
is full of hope, promise, brightness, joy, although there could not
have been wanting, to our Lord's Heart, and to some extent to that of
our Lady, presages of the days of trial and ill-success which were to
be the issue of the coldness and hostility of the very class who had
it in their power to help on the work of the Gospel the most
efficaciously. We need not think it necessary to suppose that our
Lady had, except partially and occasionally, that prevision of the
details of the future which was possessed by our Lord—her
office was that of continual prayer, suggested by the incidents as
they arose of which she had so full an intelligence. .But now the
time of separation, which had lasted for seven or eight weeks, was at
an end, and she was to meet her Blessed Son, with His little handful
of disciples, at the marriage feast at Cana, which was to witness an
immense advance in the manifestation of His power.
1
Story of the Gospels, § 17
2
Story of the Gospels, § 18
3
St. John i. 19, 28; Story of the Gospels, § 19.
4
Compare St. Matthew iii. 7, with St. John viii. 33—39.
5
Story of tie Gospels, §§ 20, 21.
