When Jesus explained what it meant to remain with him and enter the Kingdom he proclaimed, “many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.” They were unwilling to accept his teachings on sacramental realism, the indissolubility of marriage, and the necessity of the Cross. When Christ was crucified on Calvary, the group that had walked with him just six days before was gone. Only two followers remained: his Mother and John, the Beloved Disciple.

John offers a precise account of the kenosis of Jesus, which unfolds on two levels: that of divine love, pressed in the winepress of the Cross; and that of the betrayal of human loyalty, when even those who had promised fidelity usque ad mortem fled, locking themselves in their homes to lick their wounds in secret.

However, John insists that it is precisely this scene of abandonment that manifests the glory of Christ.

Glorification, says Bernard, takes place when, having completed our earthly journey, we finally behold what we have steadfastly hoped for in this life, placing our trust in the name of Jesus. “Spes in nomine, res in facie est.” There is no way to express the meaning of this concise and beautiful formula except with a somewhat ornate paraphrase: “Our hope is in the name of the Lord; the hoped-for reality is seeing him face to face.”

However, even now a certain “hidden glory” is perceptible. Augustine liked to say that here and now we bear the image of glory in a “dark form,” a form that is embodied and subject to the vicissitudes of concrete existence. Once we have passed through this life, the form will be revealed explicitly and “luminously.”

Any distortions caused by misused freedom will then be reformed, so that the form may emerge in its originally imagined beauty: as a “formous form.” Augustine, so profoundly human and yet so insightful, emphasizes that the glory of the image cannot be lost; it is imprinted on our being. However, it can become buried under layers of darkness that accumulate and must be removed.

The Church reminds women and men of the secret glory that dwells within them. The Church reveals to us that the mediocrity and despair of the present, not forgetting my own despair over my persistent failures, need not be permanent; that God’s plan for us is infinitely wonderful; and that God, through the Mystical Body of Christ, will give us the grace and strength we need to attain it, if we ask Him.

The Church manifests splendors of “hidden glory” in her saints. The saints are proof that sickness and degradation can be means that Providence uses to achieve a glorious purpose, giving strength to the weak and, not content with so little, transforming them into radiant saints.

The Church communicates the “hidden glory” in her sacraments. Every priest, every Catholic, knows the light that can burst forth in the confessional, during an anointing, an ordination, or a marriage. The most splendid, and in a certain way the most veiled, is the glory of the Holy Eucharist.

What priest could not say, after celebrating the holy mysteries, what a great musician once declared about the experience of being an instrument of a luminous communication of beauty, healing, and truth: “Death would not really be a tragedy: [because] the best of what lies at the center of human life has been seen and lived,” with a heart burning with glorious wonder?

Bishop Erik Varden of Trondheim, Norway, has been invited to preach the 2026 Spiritual Exercises for Pope Leo XIV, the cardinals residing in Rome, and the heads of Dicasteries of the Roman Curia, which will be held from Sunday, February 22, to Friday, February 27.

1. First meditation
2. Second meditation
3. Third meditation
4. Fourth meditation
5. Fifth meditation
6. Sixth meditation
7. Seventh meditation