[7] For you know how one must imitate us. For we did not act in a disorderly way among you, [8] nor did we eat food received free from anyone. On the contrary, in toil and drudgery, night and day we worked, so as not to burden any of you. [9] Not that we do not have the right. Rather, we wanted to present ourselves as a model for you, so that you might imitate us.
(CCC 533) The hidden life at Nazareth allows everyone to enter into fellowship with Jesus by the most ordinary events of daily life: The home of Nazareth is the school where we begin to understand the life of Jesus - the school of the Gospel. First, then, a lesson of silence. May esteem for silence, that admirable and indispensable condition of mind, revive in us… A lesson on family life. May Nazareth teach us what family life is, its communion of love, its austere and simple beauty, and its sacred and inviolable character... A lesson of work. Nazareth, home of the "Carpenter's Son", in you I would choose to understand and proclaim the severe and redeeming law of human work…. To conclude, I want to greet all the workers of the world, holding up to them their great pattern their brother who is God (Paul VI at Nazareth, 5 January 1964: LH, Feast of the Holy Family, OR). (CCC 564) By his obedience to Mary and Joseph, as well as by his humble work during the long years in Nazareth, Jesus gives us the example of holiness in the daily life of family and work.
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