The home of
Nazareth is the school where we begin to understand the life of Jesus –
the school of the Gospel.
The first lesson
we learn here is to look, to listen, to meditate and penetrate the
meaning – at once so deep and so mysterious – of this very simple,
very humble and very beautiful manifestation of the Son of God. Perhaps we
learn, even imperceptibly, the lesson of imitation.
Here we learn
the method which will permit us to understand who Christ is. Here above all is
made clear the importance of taking into account the general picture of his
life among us, with its varied background of place, of time, of customs, of
language, of religious practices – in fact, everything Jesus made use of
to reveal himself to the world. Here everything is eloquent, all has a meaning.
Here, in this
school, one learns why it is necessary to have a spiritual rule of life, if one
wishes to follow the teaching of the Gospel and become a disciple of Christ.
How gladly would
I become a child again, and go to school once more in this humble and sublime
school of Nazareth: close to Mary, I wish I could make a fresh start at
learning the true science of life and the higher wisdom of divine truths.
But I am only a
passing pilgrim. I must renounce this desire to pursue in this home my still
incomplete education in the understanding of the Gospel. I will not go on my
way however without having gathered – hurriedly, it is true, and as if
wanting to escape notice – some brief lessons from Nazareth.
First, then, a
lesson of silence. May esteem for silence, that admirable and indispensable
condition of mind, revive in us, besieged as we are by so many uplifted voices,
the general noise and uproar, in our seething and over-sensitized modern life.
May the silence
of Nazareth teach us recollection, inwardness, the disposition to listen to
good inspirations and the teachings of true masters. May it teach us the need
for and the value of preparation, of study, of meditation, of personal inner
life, of the prayer which God alone sees in secret.
Next, there is 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. Let us learn from Nazareth that the formation received at home is
gentle and irreplaceable. Let us learn the prime importance of the role of the
family in the social order.
Finally, there is 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; here I would restore the awareness of the nobility of work; and reaffirm that work cannot be an end in itself, but that its freedom and its excellence derive, over and above its economic worth, from the value of those for whose sake it is undertaken. And here at Nazareth, to conclude, I want to greet all the workers of the world, holding up to them their great pattern, their brother who is God. He is the prophet of all their just causes, Christ our Lord.