Consideration for the 4th day
From the bosom of his mother the Infant Jesus began practicing complete submission to the will of God, a submission that continued uninterrupted throughout his entire life. He adored his eternal Father, loved him, and submitted to his will. He acquiesced to the state in which he found himself, understanding all his weakness, degradation, and discomfort.
Which one among us would want to be reduced to such a state: without the use of reason and reflection? Who would knowingly submit to such a prolonged martyrdom, painful in so many ways? This is the pathway through which the Divine Child began his painful and humiliating career. This is how he began diminishing himself before the Father to teach us what God deserves from his creature. And, he began expiating our pride, origin of all sins, and making us understand the wickedness and disorder of this pride.
If we wish to truly pray, let us begin forming an exact idea of prayer by contemplating the Divine Child in the boson of his mother. The Divine Child prays in the most excellent manner, he does not talk, he does not meditate, and he is not dissolved in tender affections. He accepts his state with the intention of giving honor to God. In his prayer and in his state, he demonstrates exceedingly what God deserves and the way he wisher to be adored by us.
Let us unite ourselves to the prayer of the Infant God in the bosom of Mary. Let us unite ourselves to his profound prostration. May this be the first effect of our sacrifices to God, that they be not for becoming something, as is the continual pretension of our vanity, but for becoming nothing, to be eternally consumed and diminished: renouncing to our self-esteem and to all care for our greatness, even spiritual, to every insinuation of vainglory. Let us disappear before our own eyes and let God be everything to us.