Lord would not have anticipated, by a single instant, the time fixed in the eternal decree for entering on His public ministry, Nevertheless, through the long years in which He was apparently doing nothing towards the end for which He came upon earth, His work was before Him, and He was all the time unceasingly and most effectually engaged upon it. He thus affords us an incontestable proof of the utility of a life passed in prayer and penance. Would He, the incarnate Wisdom, have spent the whole of His life on earth save the three last years in a manner which was not conducive, in an eminent degree,to the glory of God and the interests of mankind? It was in the solitude of Nazareth that the great Apostleship of Prayer commenced. His labors and His every action were regulated by obedience, and this not simply during His childhood and youth, but equally in the maturity of His manhood. Each outward action He performed, each work He wrought, however ordinary in itself, was of infinite value as a prayer, as well as an act of reparation and expiation; yet these were not the principal occupation of His hidden life, nor the most important part of its teaching for ourselves.
"Our Lord's ceaseless prayer — this was the great work — opus Dei — the work of God to which He entirely consecrated thirty years of His life, the means by which He negotiated the salvation of the world, and converted souk, no less than by the brilliant works He wrought during His three years' ministry, the eloquent words that fell from His sacred lips, or the sufferings of His passion. The virtue of those secret supplications which ascended from His sacred Heart in the silence of Nazareth is being felt throughout the world now, and will continue to be felt until the end of time, and its fruits will remain for eternity. No age, no tribe, no people, no individual soul has been excluded from its em-
