which as yet lay hidden.

In the meantime other things did not matter much, seeing she had Jesus,
the object of endless love. Every mother dreams over the baby she cares
for and looks out into the future with trembling hope; so S. Mary's
thoughts would go out following the hints of prophecy and angelic
utterances, unable to understand how the light and shadow which were
mingled there could find fulfilment in her Child. But like any other
mother the thought would come back to her present possession, the
satisfaction of her heart that she had in Jesus. With the growth of
Jesus there would come the unfolding of the answering love, which was
but another mode in which the love of God she had experienced all her
life was manifesting itself. Jesus grew in wisdom and stature and we are
able to enter a little into the over-flowing love of Mary as she watched
the advance, this unfolding from day to day. The wonder that was hers in
guiding this mind and will, in teaching our Lord His first prayers, in
telling Him the story of the people of whom He had assumed our nature!
There was here no self-will, no resistance to guidance, no perversity to
wound a mother's heart. In the training of an ordinary child there are
from time to time hints of characteristics or tendencies which may
develop later into spiritual or moral disaster. There are growls of the
sleeping beast which make us tremble for the future: there are hours of
agony when we think of the inevitable temptations which must be met, and
suggestions of weakness which colour our imagination of the meeting of
them with the lurid light of defeat. But as Mary watched the unfolding
character of Jesus she saw nothing there that carried with it the least
suggestion of evil growth in the future, no outcropping of hereditary
sin or disordered appetite. A constantly unfolding intelligence, and
growing interest in the things that most interested her, an eagerness to
hear and to know of the will and love of the eternal Father, these are
her joy. That would have been the centre--would it not?--of the
unfolding consciousness of Jesus: the knowledge of the Father.

Training by love, so we might describe the life in the Home at Nazareth.
And we must not forget the grave ageing figure who is the head of the
household. _The Holy Family_--that was the perfect unity that their love
created. There is a wonderful picture of these three by Sassaferato
which catches, as no other Holy Family that I kn