Hidden Life

HIDDEN LIFE

During the time in between the end of the Christmas Season (soon) and the beginning of Lenten Season the Church focuses on the public life of Jesus proclaiming God's Kingdom, but also implicitly on His hidden life. This ought to appeal to most of us, simple people. As the Catechism points out: “In the course of His hidden life at Nazareth Jesus stayed in the silence of an ordinary existence. This allows us to enter into fellowship with Him in the holiness to be found in a daily life marked by prayer, simplicity, work, and family love.” (Compendium #104).

What a good news for us who may find our routinary daily living sometimes boring or even tiresome! We do not have to look for ‘excitement’ or the so-called ‘fun’ in the worldly sense. It is enough that we have some healthy variations, some well deserved breaks or wholesome recreation, to re-energize us and break the monotony, so to speak.

Scriptures remind us that “God makes all things new” (Rev 21:5). Lived in the state of grace our lives are EVER NEW. St. Paul reminds us that at baptism we have died with Christ (to sin), “so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the Father's glory, we too might live a new life” (Rom 6:4).

We must, however, remember that “no one sews a piece of unshrunken cloth on an old cloak; if he does, the patch pulls away from it, the new from the old, and the tear gets worse. And nobody puts new wine into old wineskins; if he does, the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is lost and the skins, too. No! New wine, fresh skins!” (Mk 2: 21-22). These images/ analogies from our Lord remind us of the need to shun our OLD ways of SIN, if we are to be made new creatures in Christ. In other words we need to cooperate or correspond with God's grace. For “to the one who has more will be given, and from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away” (Mk 4:25). This is how it works in our spiritual life. Hence the importance of making that uncompromising total commitment to Christ, so that “now our lives are HIDDEN with Christ IN God” (Col 3:3). And the graces will flow upon us superabundantly.

And so we may be living routinely day after day, repeat and repeat. But it is more like an ascending SPIRAL STAIRWAY that goes round and round but UPWARDLY; that is, we grow in holiness (union with God in love) as we daily offer to God our whole being beginning with the MORNING OFFERING. We may even be, each day, afflicted with trials and sufferings. But even these are vehicles toward growth in our union with the Cross of Christ that purify us even more. We may not understand everything that God allows to happen to us, but like Mary we ponder them silently in our hearts, in trustful surrender to His loving Will.

Unfortunately in today's ‘social media culture’ we can so easily fall into the trend/trap of over-publicizing the events of our daily lives, as though afraid of the hiddenness of our lives.
Actually the real healthy social living consists in the daily genuinely loving encounters and interactions with our fellow men marked with benevolence and active charity, (lived in the state of grace).

May we not be afraid but rather be SECURE in HIDING our lives with Christ IN God (cf Col 3:3). Then surely we will be lights to one another, shining Christ's LIGHT in our world.