How could Christ 'increase in wisdom and grace'?
Heretics have seized on this ‘increase in wisdom and grace’ as a means of promoting their errors. Here's what it really means.
Heretics have seized on this ‘increase in wisdom and grace’ as a means of promoting their errors. Here's what it really means.
In this piece, Father Coleridge tells us…
Why St. Luke’s account of Christ’s increase “in wisdom, age, and grace” presents theological insights and has been misinterpreted by heretics throughout history.
How Christ’s growth in wisdom and grace as Man does not imply deficiency but reflects the unfolding manifestation of His perfection through His actions and words.
What His Hidden Life teaches us about the spiritual significance of subjection, obedience, and humility in achieving growth in wisdom, grace, and holiness.
He shows us that Christ’s Hidden Life at Nazareth offers timeless lessons in the sanctifying power of obedience and subjection, revealing that true spiritual growth comes from following God’s will with humility and love.
DID YOU KNOW…
In the traditional Roman Rite, the Mass of the First Sunday after Epiphany is never said on the actual first Sunday after Epiphany?
This is because it is always either transferred (usually because it is displaced by the Feast of the Holy Family) or omitted entirely.1
But while the Holy Family is given priority over the Sunday in the liturgical calendar, the traditional Gospel reading of the Finding in the Temple (Luke 2:42–52) is common to both liturgical observances—reflecting the profound connection between Christ’s hidden life and the sanctity of family life.
Subjection and Growth
The Thirty Years—Our Lord’s Infancy & Hidden Life
Ch. XIX, pp 362-370.
St. Luke ii. 50–52; Story of the Gospels, § 16
Burns and Oates, London, 1885 (1915 edition).
Headings and some line breaks added.
Sung on the feast of the Holy Family and the First Sunday after Epiphany
Increase in wisdom and grace
We may suppose that it is not without a design connected with this truth that the Evangelist passes on to mention the one other point belonging to the history of these years which he subjoins in the next place. He tells us that the characteristic of this time, after the subjection of our Lord, was that it was a time of progress.
“Jesus increased in wisdom and age, and in grace with God and men.”
As is well known, these words are not without theological difficulties unless they are interpreted in accordance with the teaching of the Church. This text is one of the passages which has a history in Christian literature, because attempts have been made, from time to time, by heretics of various kinds, to fasten on them an untrue meaning.
There have also been some among the Fathers who have allowed explanations which others have rejected, although they have deemed them free from the taint of anything heretical.
It will not be necessary to go into a history of the interpretations thus referred to. It will be sufficient to state the fundamental truth on the subject, and then add the explanations which seem most to harmonize with that truth.
Theological truth
To those who believe our Lord to be God, there can be no question as to any increase in Him of Divine wisdom or knowledge. It is very obvious, indeed, that St. Luke is not here speaking of His Divine knowledge, for the increase of which he speaks is in three things, wisdom, age, and grace.
The two last must be considered to refer to Him as Man, and therefore the first also. As Man, we must not allow ourselves to affirm that He could increase or did increase in wisdom, in such a sense as that He came to know at any time, after the moment of the Hypostatic Union, anything that He did not know then.
We must insist on the same truth with regard to increase in grace. The union of the Divine Person with the Soul of Jesus Christ filled it at once with all grace and all wisdom, as St. John tells us that He dwelt among us, full of grace and truth. From the very first moment, the Soul of our Lord had the full use of free will and choice, and so also it had the perfect fulness of grace and of knowledge.
It remains, therefore, for us to inquire in what way, consistently with this principle, He can have increased in wisdom and grace, and we must found our interpretation of the words of the Evangelist on what we discover in this matter.
Interpretation of St Gregory of Nazianzus
In the first place, we find an interpretation which has the authority of several of the Fathers, among others the great theologian St. Gregory of Nazianzus and St. Jerome.
These doctors teach that the increase in wisdom and grace of which St. Luke tells us consisted in the manifestation, as time went on, of ever greater wisdom and ever greater grace. Our Lord could not but show, in His acts and words, the heavenly powers that were in His Soul, and the successive manifestations of these were to those who saw and heard Him a constant increase in wisdom and in grace.
It cannot be questioned that this interpretation is in accordance with Catholic theology, and that it is also a very natural commentary on the words of St. Luke, which come, as has so often been said, from His Blessed Mother herself. She must have been divinely enlightened from the very first as to the theology of the Incarnation, and therefore must have known from the first the truth set forth by St. John.
But she must have watched with intense and loving adoration the growth of our Lord in all external manifestations of what was in Him, and in speaking of Him and thinking of Him, she would naturally have Him before her mind as He was in the eyes of herself and St. Joseph, unfolding ever more and more the endless stores of grace and wisdom which were in Him always, but which were not so much displayed in the earlier stages of His Infancy as in the later, not all so conspicuous in the Boy as in the Man.
Doctrine of the schoolmen
We may mention, in the next place, a doctrine common among the scholastic theologians concerning the various kinds of the knowledge of our Lord, and we shall find that we may gain considerably thereby in the intelligence of the text before us.
The scholastics, after treating of the knowledge which our Lord possessed as God, and which is the same identical wisdom which is possessed by the Father and the Holy Ghost, divide the knowledge of His human Soul in three ways.
First, there is the knowledge which comes from the intuitive vision of God which His Soul had from the moment of the union. He saw perfectly the Divinity, and in that, He saw all created things. This knowledge was full and perfect from the very first, and therefore as to this, He could not increase.
The second kind of knowledge of the Soul of our Lord was the infused knowledge which it received also at the beginning, and this was perfect in Him at once and admitted of no increase. It differed only from the knowledge of vision in this, that in the knowledge of vision He saw all things in God, and that by His infused knowledge He knew created things in themselves.
In neither of these was any defect, any ignorance, possible to Him, and He knew nothing by the infused knowledge which He did not also know by the knowledge of vision.
But there was also a third kind of knowledge possible to Him, indeed, He could not help having it. What was this third kind of knowledge?
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Experimental knowledge
But there was also a third kind of knowledge possible to Him, indeed, He could not help having it.
It was the acquired and experimental knowledge which grew day by day as His Life went on, as His senses were used, as He became acquainted with the world, with men, with the ways of Providence, the conditions and circumstances of human existence.
He would not have been like other men if He had not had this, and indeed, it must be thought that He had it in a perfection far greater than that of other men. This perfection would come from the perfection of His Sacred Humanity in all its faculties of intelligence, which would make His experimental knowledge of all around Him grow with a growth of unexampled rapidity.
Thus, He knew His Blessed Mother perfectly from the first moment of the Incarnation, and His experimental knowledge of her, acquired by His constant and most loving familiarity with her as her Child and Companion and Lord, could not add anything in the same kind to His infused knowledge.
But it would be a knowledge which increased in its own kind day after day. St. John tells us He had no need of knowledge of this kind to put Him on His guard against men when he says that our Lord did not commit Himself to many who believed on Him on account of His miracles.
“But Jesus did not trust Himself unto them, for that He knew all men, and because He needed not that any should give testimony of man, for He knew what was in man.” (St. John ii. 24, 25.)
He did not need it, but He had it, and in this certainly there must have been increase and advance, according to the common laws of human nature. St. Paul tells us that He learned obedience from the things that He suffered (Hebrews v. 8), and this is often understood of this experimental knowledge. As to the possibility and existence, therefore, of this increase in our Lord's knowledge of this kind, there need be no question.
Thus, if it were necessary, we might adopt this interpretation of the text of which we are speaking, for here is certainly a kind of knowledge which is necessarily one that increases daily, and as to which, therefore, it may truly be said that our Lord did increase.
Opinion of Toletus
The difficulty about the adoption of this interpretation lies only in the fact that it may not seem likely that St. Luke intended to speak of this kind of increase as one that was manifested before men as well as before God, and it seems natural to think that the words with which the sentence ends are meant to be applied to all the three heads of increase of which mention is made.
This, at least, is the difficulty which is raised by the great commentator Toletus. He seems rather here to incline to the interpretation before mentioned, namely, that which places the increase of wisdom in the manifestation of wisdom, and the like, which advanced in beauty and clearness day after day, year after year.
This interpretation seems the more natural of the two when we remember that the account comes to us from the Mother of our Lord, who would naturally watch, as all mothers do, the unfolding of the faculties and the manifestation of the gifts of her Child in His daily life.
Language of the passage
The language of the passage before us is the ordinary language of a Christian home, and does not confine itself to the theological truths which relate to the Soul of our Lord.
If there could have been any true increase in His case in interior wisdom and grace, that increase would not have fallen under the ken of that Blessed Mother except in its outward manifestations. But we know that in His case there could be no such interior advance, for the reason already given.
We must therefore understand the words of that gradual advance from the wisdom of the Boy to the wisdom of the Man and the grace of the Child to the grace of the Man, which was to be seen in His words and actions by the eyes which watched Him so tenderly. And this explanation is all the more natural when we remember that the advance in age would in the usual order of things bring with it an advance, not of higher interior wisdom as underlying and manifesting itself in the same actions, but of wisdom and grace as embodied in ever more and more beautiful actions, for the actions and the words which belong to a more mature age advance in intrinsic maturity and beauty.
The advance is in the actions themselves, as, for instance, the action of our Lord in remaining behind in the Temple was a higher action than an act of obedience to St. Joseph in the workshop, though the grace and wisdom of Him Who did these two actions were the same in the one case as in the other. In this sense, therefore, the increase here spoken of may be understood.
Religious vocations
It is impossible not to be struck with the manner in which these very simple statements concerning the last eighteen years of the Hidden Life have been so framed as to set forth the most precious spiritual doctrine as well as the historical facts.
The Hidden Life of our Lord has always been considered in the Church as the foundation, not only of the holy home life of the great mass of Christian families, but also of the religious life, strictly so called, which is founded on the observance of the Evangelical Counsels and consecrated to God by the sacrifice of perpetual vows. We see good reasons for this common opinion in the incidents of the case, especially in the connection between the words of our Lord to His Mother in the Temple and the long years of obedience and subjection which followed.
These words seem to tell us that He had from that time a direct call from His Father, like that which is given ordinarily in the case of what are specifically called vocations, and that that call was obeyed by Him in all that followed afterwards in the cottage at Nazareth, as well as by what He had done in the three days at Jerusalem.
Thus, as soon as our Lord came to the age when it is usual to think that a religious vocation is possible, His obedience and subjection to His parents take this new character of a special consecration. They were the obedience and subjection of One Who, if He had been like one of us in all matters, would still have been old enough and sufficiently His own Master to make them a sacrifice to God.
But it is in connection with this period of His Life in particular that we have the passage on which we have now been commenting, about His advance in wisdom and grace as well as in age. It can certainly not be thought fanciful if we see in this a significant suggestion of the truth, on which spiritual writers, from St. Gregory downwards, are so fond of dwelling, namely, that a life of subjection and obedience is the most essential condition of advance in wisdom and grace.
These words have been the light and consolation of thousands who have followed the Divine call in the life of perfection, and the glory to God and fruitfulness of grace which have been manifested in souls of this class have been the best and the most beautiful commentary on the words of the Evangelist.
Fruitfulness of obedience
Obedience and subjection certainly imply and nurture humility, and where humility is rooted in the soul, and in proportion as it expands, there charity, the queen of all virtues, is necessarily found to expand also.
Again, obedience and subjection subdue that part of the soul which is the most noble, the will, as well as the understanding, and consequently this sacrifice is most meritorious, a sacrifice which is certain to provoke a most generous recompense from God.
Again, these virtues place the soul in safety against the attacks of the great concupiscences, which are the great hindrances to perfection. Holy writers on the subject will furnish us with an abundance of such reasons. Thus we see that there is nothing fanciful in the application of these words of St. Luke to the principles of the spiritual life, especially in religion.
Taking these mysteries together, we find three things told us of our Lord at this time.
In the first place, He obeyed a Divine call, without attending to human ties.
In the second place, He made Himself subject and obedient for a long number of years, which carried Him far beyond the dawn of full manhood.
In the third place, His Life was such that it could be truly said of Him that this period was a period of great increase in wisdom and grace as well as in age.
It is very easy to apply the several stages here set before us to the history of the religious soul, which begins by obedience to a Divine call, goes on to place itself, by a solemn consecration, under the yoke of obedience, and there finds its reward in a continual increase and growth in heavenly wisdom and mature spiritual strength.
From Fr Henry James Coleridge, The Thirty Years, Our Lord’s Infancy & Hidden Life, ‘The Epiphany’, published 1885, this edition Burns and Oates, London, 1915, pp 369-378
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Fr Coleridge provides solid explanations of the entirety of the Gospel
His work is full of doctrine and piety, and is highly credible
He gives a clear trajectory of the life of Christ, its drama and all its stages—increasing our appreciation and admiration for the God-Man.
If more Catholics knew about works like Coleridge’s, then other works based on sentimentality and dubious private revelations would be much less attractive.
But sourcing and curating the texts, cleaning up scans, and editing them for online reading is a labour of love, and takes a lot of time.
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The First Sunday after Epiphany is always either displaced by the Feast of the Holy Family, or omitted entirely.
If the First Sunday falls between 7-11 January, it will be transferred to the Monday following Holy Family (which will be between 8-12 January).
If the Octave Day of Epiphany (13 January) is a Sunday, then Holy Family will be anticipated on Saturday (12 January) and the First Sunday transferred to the Monday (14 January).
But if 12 January is a Sunday, then there will be no free weekdays after the Octave—and so the First Sunday is omitted entirely.