Hidden with Christ
MASS Státuit ei
LESSON Ecclesiasticus 45. 1-6
GOSPEL St Matthew 19. 27-29
HOMILIST Mt Revd Jerome Lloyd OSJV
Beloved in Christ,
Carissimi, there is a striking contrast at the heart of the life of St Giles. Giles wished to hide his holiness; another man, according to the ancient story of the saint, wished to hide his sin. The saint fled from the applause of men; the king fled from the humiliation of confession. Giles concealed himself because he feared that human praise might steal from God what belonged to God alone; the sinner concealed his guilt because he feared what truth would demand of him. And between those two kinds of hiding lies almost the whole drama of the spiritual life. The world teaches us to display our virtues and conceal our sins. Christianity teaches us the opposite: conceal from vanity what is good, but expose to divine mercy what is evil.
The traditional life of Giles takes us from Athens to Gaul, from privilege to poverty, from civilisation into the wilderness. Born, we are told, of noble family, educated and wealthy, he distributed his inheritance after the death of his parents and departed from his native land. But notice what he was really fleeing. It was not merely money. It was not even merely society. He fled reputation. His charity had attracted admiration, and admiration itself had become dangerous. So he crossed into Gaul, first near the Rhône, later near the Gard, and finally sought the deeper solitude of the forests near Nîmes. He wanted to disappear. Yet the man who tried hardest to be forgotten became one of the most widely remembered saints of medieval Christendom, invoked by generations of the sick, the frightened, the poor and the afflicted. God has a curious way of preserving the memory of those who cease trying to preserve it themselves.
That is why the Introit penetrates immediately to the centre of the man: Os iusti meditábitur sapiéntiam, et lingua ejus loquétur judícium: lex Dei ejus in corde ipsíus — “The mouth of the just shall meditate wisdom, and his tongue shall speak judgment: the law of his God is in his heart.” The decisive words are the last: in corde ipsius — in his heart. Not merely upon his lips. Not merely in his public profession. Not in the opinion others have formed of him. The law of God is within.
Here is the test of sanctity. What are we when nobody is watching? What is our religion when there is no congregation, no audience, no recognition, no opportunity to be thought devout? It is possible to possess every external mark of Catholic identity and yet remain inwardly undisciplined. A man may defend orthodoxy and still be proud. He may love beautiful liturgy and neglect mental prayer. He may condemn the disorders of the age while making peace with his own habitual sins. He may speak magnificently of Tradition while refusing the most ancient tradition of all: repentance. God is not deceived by appearances. Lex Dei ejus in corde ipsius. The question is not merely whether Catholic truth is in our books, upon our walls, or upon our tongues. Has it descended into the heart?
The Epistle deepens the same mystery. It speaks of the servant whom God “sanctified in his faith and meekness,” who heard the divine voice and was brought “into a cloud.” Scripture repeatedly shows God hiding His chosen servants before revealing their mission. Moses enters the cloud before descending with the Law. Elijah is taken into solitude before he confronts kings. St John Baptist grows in the desert before his voice is heard beside the Jordan. Above all, the Incarnate Word Himself spends thirty years hidden at Nazareth before scarcely three years of public ministry. The world supposes that importance requires visibility. God forms His greatest works in obscurity.
This is why the solitude of Giles was not an escape from reality. It was an escape from unreality. He withdrew from noise in order to hear; from possessions in order to become free; from applause in order to know himself beneath the gaze of God. Christian detachment is not contempt for creation. In the language of the schools, it is the restoration of right order. Creatures are good, but they cease to be good for us when we demand from them what only God can give. Wealth becomes dangerous when it promises security. Reputation becomes dangerous when it becomes identity. Affection becomes disordered when we cannot bear to lose it. Even religious activity can become spiritually dangerous when we begin to need admiration for performing it.
Tradition pictures Giles in the forest with the hind that came to sustain him. Then one day hunters pursued the animal into his solitude and discovered the hermit. The detail is beautiful because Giles does not emerge from the forest seeking an audience; the audience comes to him. Holiness becomes visible precisely because it was not cultivated for visibility. He had not constructed a reputation for sanctity. He had become holy.
And now the contrast becomes sharper. The traditional life tells of a ruler tormented by a grave sin which he had never confessed. Giles tells him that peace will come only when the concealed sin is brought into the light. Thus the saint who hides his virtue teaches the sinner to stop hiding his vice.
There are, then, things which ought to be hidden and things which must be revealed. Our almsgiving need not be advertised. Our fasting need not be announced. The sacrifices we make for others need not be remembered aloud. The humiliations we endure need not be converted into stories in which we are secretly the hero. Let the Father who sees in secret see them.
But sin is different. Sin grows in darkness. The sin we refuse to name acquires power over us precisely through secrecy. The resentment cherished for years; the impurity repeatedly excused; the dishonesty we rename prudence; the cruelty we call frankness; the vanity we call principle; the pride we disguise as righteous indignation — these must be dragged into the light of confession. Satan says: hide your sin because exposure will destroy you. Christ says: confess your sin because mercy will restore you.
How strange that contemporary man so often reverses this Gospel order. We live amid an almost compulsive publication of the self. Good works, opinions, affiliations, achievements, emotions and even private moments are displayed before the world, while sin itself is no longer confessed but explained, justified, medicalised, politicised or renamed. We have become extraordinarily willing to reveal ourselves and extraordinarily unwilling to accuse ourselves. Yet there can be no spiritual freedom until a man can stand before God and say without qualification: I have sinned.
Then comes today’s Gospel, and suddenly the entire life of Giles is interpreted by Christ Himself. St Peter says: “Behold we have left all things, and have followed Thee: what therefore shall we have?” And Our Lord promises the hundredfold and life everlasting.
We often misunderstand renunciation because we think of it principally as loss. Christ describes it as exchange. “Give Me what cannot last, and I shall give you what cannot perish.” Giles gives away an inheritance and receives an inheritance among the saints. He surrenders his name to obscurity and his name is carried across Christendom. He abandons earthly security and becomes a refuge for generations who invoke him in fear and distress. He tries to disappear into a forest, and centuries later the Church still pronounces his name at the altar.
This is the paradox of the Gospel: whatever we cling to as though it were ultimate we shall lose; whatever we surrender to God we receive again according to a higher mode. Grace does not annihilate nature; it liberates it from our possessiveness.
Most Christians will never be called to imitate the external form of Giles’s life. You need not seek a forest, abandon your household or live upon roots and water. But there is no Christian vocation without Giles’s interior renunciation. There are possessions which do not appear on a bank statement. The need to be admired is a possession. The need always to be right is a possession. A grievance preserved for twenty years is a possession. An imagined future without which we refuse to be happy is a possession. The judgment of another person can become a possession. Even our preferred image of ourselves can become an idol which grace must shatter.
“What therefore shall we have?” asks Peter. Everything, answers Christ — but only after you cease trying to possess everything without Me.
And beside St Giles today Holy Church commemorates the Twelve Holy Brothers, African Christians who suffered martyrdom during the persecutions and whose relics were later gathered at Benevento. Their presence beside this Gospel is almost providentially eloquent. Christ speaks of the Twelve seated upon thrones; the liturgy remembers twelve Christians who surrendered life itself rather than abandon Him. We need not force an allegory to perceive the harmony. Giles gives up the world by ascetic renunciation; the Twelve surrender it through martyrdom. One disappears into the forest; the others disappear beneath the sword. But the spiritual act is identical: God is worth more.
The martyrs therefore prevent us from making detachment sentimental. Men who accepted death for Christ did not regard religion as an accessory to an otherwise ordinary life. Their blood declares that Heaven is real enough to sacrifice earth for, truth real enough to suffer for, Christ real enough to die for. Giles says the same thing without the sword. His whole life is a bloodless martyrdom of the will.
And now the liturgy brings us to its deepest mystery. The Communion calls the saint “a faithful and wise steward, whom the Lord set over His family, to give them their measure of wheat in due season.” But what wheat does the Church finally give us? Not merely doctrine, not merely example, but Christ Himself — the Bread that came down from Heaven.
Here the hiddenness of Giles reaches its fulfilment. Upon this altar Christ will become more hidden than Giles ever was in his forest. The Creator of the stars conceals Himself beneath the appearances of bread. Omnipotence makes no display. Majesty is veiled. The Word speaks through silence. The King whom Heaven cannot contain permits Himself to be enclosed within the tabernacle.
And suddenly we understand why hidden holiness is so profoundly Christian. Our religion begins with a hidden God in the womb of His Mother, continues with a hidden God at Nazareth, reaches Calvary where divinity is hidden beneath suffering and humiliation, and remains among us beneath the sacramental veils of the Eucharist. The saint does not hide because he despises the world. He hides because he has fallen in love with a God who hides Himself.
Carissimi, perhaps that is the grace of this feast: to become content to be hidden with Christ. To do good without needing praise. To sacrifice without keeping accounts. To pray when nobody notices. To surrender what possesses us. To confess without excuses what must be confessed. To let God see the virtue that men need never see, and to let His mercy see the sins that pride desperately wishes to conceal.
St Giles fled the judgment of the world because he desired the judgment of God. The Twelve Holy Brothers endured the judgment of the world because they believed in the judgment of God. And the hidden Christ upon our altar is Himself the Judge before whom every secret will finally be revealed.
May St Giles obtain for us purity of heart. May the Holy Martyrs obtain for us courage. May we hide what humility ought to hide and reveal what repentance must reveal. And may the law of God be written so deeply within us that, when every reputation has vanished, every possession has passed away, and every earthly voice has fallen silent, it may truly be said of us:
Lex Dei ejus in corde ipsius.
The law of his God is in his heart.
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
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