Meditation by Fr. Dehon on the mystery of Christmas from the first volume of “The Love of the Sacred Heart.”
The hidden life is that which has no apparent exterior acts or at most very simple acts. Sometimes God wills a life hidden from the outside world and at other times He does not. He chose this hidden life for thirty years. But the life hidden in God He always wants; it is the source of the most intimate union with God. The hidden life in God is pre-eminently the immolation of the heart; it is this which perfects the dispositions of this profession of immolation.
In what does this consist? It is a continual or almost continual communication with God. It is not accomplished from the outside as if one were knocking at the door, but from the inside as with someone who is in the house. God is our house: “Be my rock of refuge, a stronghold to give me safety” (Psalm 30:3). Throughout His life the Sacred Heart of Jesus was always lost in God by a continual prayer that consisted in love and in an ever-repeated oblation of Himself. No worry or disquiet was in this Heart. Not only did He make continual acts of oblation and love and communicate habitually with His Father; He did more. Communication with God was a fixed and immutable state for Him; He was established in God. No better term expresses this idea -it was an habitual state.
Practical Applications
As for ourselves, we can go to God only through the Sacred Heart; it is in the Heart of Jesus that we are to unite ourselves to God, and to communicate with Him. There in the Heart of the Son we shall find the Father and the Holy Ghost.
L. Dehon, The love of the Sacred Heart, 60
