5th Week after Epiphany: Friday

Summary of the Morrow’s Meditation

We will meditate to-morrow on the adolescence of Jesus Christ, and we will consider: 1st, why the Incarnate Word willed to grow only little by little like other children; 2d, what we must understand by these words of the Gospel: “Jesus advanced in wisdom and age, and grace with God and men” (Luke ii. 52). We will then make the resolution: 1st, often to encourage ourselves to make progress in Christian life; to live better today than yesterday, during the present hour than during the one which preceded it; 2d, often to say to ourselves: I have done nothing yet for God; I must begin now for good and all to serve Him better. Our spiritual nosegay shall be the words of the Gospel: “Jesus grew in wisdom and age, and grace with God and men” (Luke ii. 52).

Meditation for the Morning

Let us adore Jesus arrived at the age of adolescence, increasing every day in wisdom and in grace; not in the sense that He acquired some fresh degree of knowledge and holiness, because, from the first moment of His conception, He was consummate wisdom and infinite holiness; but in the sense that He permitted to appear outwardly by little and little and by degrees His wisdom and holiness, not showing signs of either the one or the other except in accordance with His progress towards manhood. Oh, how adorable He is, how amiable He shows Himself to be in this delicate attention, springing from His love, only to let us see, little by little, what He was in Himself. It is thus that, instead of showing us all at once the sun at its meridian, which would dazzle us, He brings it little by little above the horizon, after having begun with a dawn which is almost indistinguishable from night, in order to humor our delicate eyesight. Let us render to Him our homage of praise and love.

First Point

Why the Incarnate Word would only Increase in Age Little by Little, like other Children.

There is in this succession of growth in the Saviour, until He arrived at adolescence, at the state of complete manhood, a profound mystery. Jesus, hiding Himself at the beginning of His career, willed two things: 1st, to prepare minds, little by little, for the splendor of His miracles and of His divine mission; 2d, to give a great lesson to our self-love and our ignorance: to our self-love, which cannot bear to see its own miseries, its weaknesses, and its temptations; to our ignorance, which cannot comprehend that a man does not become perfect all at once that perfection is a work which takes a long time, which is only consummated by dint of tearing out and replanting, of destroying and building up, things which are not done in a day; and that, lastly, a perfect life resembles a mysterious ladder, the top of which is not reached by a bound, but only by painfully climbing all the rungs, one after the other. It is this intemperate zeal, this impatience springing from self-love, that our amiable Saviour willed to correct, by showing less perfection outwardly, less knowledge and less holiness during His childhood than during His adolescence, and during His adolescence than when He had arrived at manhood (Luke ii. 40-52), as we read in the Holy Scriptures. Let us learn from hence: 1st, to have patience with ourselves, to bear with a meek and humble spirit all our weaknesses, and to make them the foundation of solid humility; 2d, to grow constantly in a better life; to persuade ourselves thoroughly that we are still far from attaining our object; to repair past sin by present well-doing, continually to correct our defects, and ceaselessly to press forward, following therein the example set us by St. Paul (Philipp. iii. 13).

Second Point

What we must Understand by the Words: “Jesus Grew in Wisdom and Age and Grace?”

To increase in grace is to grow in the knowledge of God and of His infinite perfection, in the knowledge of ourselves and of our wretchedness, in the knowledge of all that concerns our salvation and the duties of our state. Intelligence has been given us for that alone. To grow in age is to put away the spiritual miseries of another age, such as the frivolity which does not reflect, vanity, inconstancy, malice, all the weaknesses from which St. Paul esteemed himself happy to have been freed, when he said: “When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child. But when I became a man, I put away the things of a child” (I. Cor. xiii. 11). Lastly, to grow in grace is to grow in holiness; and herein we lie under a daily obligation until we have arrived at the fullness of grace of the perfect man in Jesus Christ, which will take place only in heaven. Such is the holy life in which Jesus, when He was adolescent, allowed exterior progress to show itself every day before God and before man (Luke ii. 52): before God by His interior life, before man by means of the edification of His divine example. We ought to act in the same manner, because not to advance is to go back; we ought at least to desire it ardently, because we advance only in proportion to the desire we have for it; the desire excludes the thought of acting wrongly, and gives to the soul courage and energy to do well. Let us examine ourselves as to whether we have this great zeal for our spiritual progress; whether every day we heartily desire to become better, and if, in order to be so, we make serious and constant efforts, accompanied by fervent prayers and holy desires.

Resolutions and spiritual nosegay as above.