Helena Mary Cole

“Jesus loves a hidden soul. A hidden flower is the most fragrant.” St. Faustina Kowalska 

I haven’t read more than a paragraph or two of St. Faustina’s diary, but this quotation was highlighted on the Hallow app lately, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since.  

Interesting note: St. Faustina lived in the city of Vilnius when she received her visions, and wrote her diary, only in her day, Vilnius belonged to Poland, while now it belongs to Lithuania. But it feels like a tiny connection anyway, to think I lived (for however short a time) in the same city she lived in. 

Hiddenness is just so, so common to the autistic experience, feeling hidden, feeling trapped inside, wondering if you’ll ever get out. For the most part, people expect to get to know other people through social interaction/conversation. While some autistic people are big talkers, and one might hear a fair amount of socially blind monologuing from them, I tend toward the other extreme. My social blindness does not so much “come out” as it “stays in,” which means that, from me, you get a lot of silence in busy social situations. Social conversation is not now and never has been a good way to get to know me, unless you happen to also be autistic or neurodivergent in some way. 

Wow. It’s nice to be able to articulate that now, in those words. 

The point is, the inner life of an autistic person is always vast, vibrant, dramatic, full of passionate interests, a wild rollercoaster of a life. But you’d never know that to look at us.  Simultaneously, all of this is why we’d rather spend time in our inner world instead of the one where we’re socially inept, often don’t fit in, and feel woefully ineffective. Here’s the rub: we’d love to share our inner worlds with other people. When other people stumble upon them around the corner (maybe they read our writing or looked at some of our artwork or finally managed to get us talking one-on-one, in one of our safe spaces, about something that interests us), they often remark, “I never knew you were so interesting.” 

So, it can be a very frustrating thing, to be buried so deeply inside with little hope of getting out. To be hidden. 

But hiddenness can be a beautiful thing. On the last day, everything hidden will be revealed. Hiddenness will not last forever, and when the veil comes off, the hiddenness of a person who went through life with autism might be the exact thing that made them so powerful in the Kingdom. 

I mean, look at my patron saint, Therese of Lisieux: entered the Carmelite convent at age fifteen, lived there nine years and then died painfully of tuberculosis. Her Mother Superior looked on her life after it was over and shrugged, saying, “There’s nothing to be said about her.” Then someone picked up her writings, which, I might add, she had been doing under orders, and read them, and then it all came out. Her inner meditations were powerful, beautiful, and life-changing. Now Therese of Lisieux is a Doctor of the Church and one of the most popular saints in the world. 

It was revealed to St. Therese, in her lifetime, that one day she would be a powerful saint, but that that would remain hidden while her life lasted. 

Where’s the line, though, the line between, “I have a talent and it’s good to share that with the world instead of hoarding it” and “what’s hidden will come out one day and show itself to be powerful”? 

Maybe that’s one of the advantages of writing or any kind of creative projects that are concrete and have to potential to stay behind after we’re gone. One’s contribution might still be discovered after one’s life has ended. 

“Jesus loves a hidden soul.” 

Well, I’m still trying to get published. But in some ways, it’s out of my hands. 

When you’re autistic, and you get overlooked a lot because you’re a big old mess socially, and you develop this desperation to show everyone you have a contribution to make to the world, too, but you’re trying and trying and still no one knows you’re there… and then you read that line from St. Faustina, and it feels like a punch in exactly the spot where it will hit the hardest. 

It’s like God saying, “Are you trying and trying to contribute, and not getting very far very fast, even though you have a talent that I gave you? Don’t worry. I see you.” 

Also, it’s a big deal for someone like me, who once wanted to make it so big as an author that I could afford a mansion, to get to point in life where I’m thinking, “Getting super famous after death really isn’t a bad way to do it. Saint Therese was really onto something.” 

Life is very surprising.