104. What does the hidden life of Jesus in Nazareth teach us?

104. What does the hidden life of Jesus in Nazareth teach us?

(Comp 104) In the course of his hidden life in Nazareth Jesus stayed in the silence of an ordinary existence. This allows us to enter into fellowship with him in the holiness to be found in a daily life marked by prayer, simplicity, work and family love. His obedience to Mary and to Joseph, his foster father, is an image of his filial obedience to the Father. Mary and Joseph accepted with faith the mystery of Jesus even though they did not always understand it.

“In brief”

(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.

To deepen and explain

(CCC 534) The finding of Jesus in the temple is the only event that breaks the silence of the Gospels about the hidden years of Jesus (Cf. Lk 2:41-52). Here Jesus lets us catch a glimpse of the mystery of his total consecration to a mission that flows from his divine sonship: "Did you not know that I must be about my Father's work?" (Lk 2:49 alt). Mary and Joseph did not understand these words, but they accepted them in faith. Mary "kept all these things in her heart" during the years Jesus remained hidden in the silence of an ordinary life.

On reflection

(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).

(Next question: Why did Jesus receive from John the “baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” (Luke 3:3)?)