The mystery of Nazareth is an antidote for today’s insanity.
This short meditation, written by Marie in 1979 when she was director of our house in Portland Oregon, is especially timely today.
Ever since my return from the Directors’ Meetings in Combermere, one meditation keeps coming to me. It centers on the ordinariness of Nazareth, where the Son of God spent thirty of the thirty-three years of his life. Imagine — most of his life was hidden in a little-known place called Nazareth.
What did Jesus do there all those years? It seems odd that the Son of God should have hidden himself away like that. It is almost a scandal. It even seems to go against his own teaching not to hide a light under a bushel basket. As one thinks about this, a feeling of having walked into a mystery takes hold. To see the Son of God working with his hands, with perspiration running down his face — the curse that man must work by the sweat of his brow has been transformed into a benediction forever. Holy and blessed is the labor and sweat of man, sanctified by the Son of God himself, who humbled himself to become one of us.
The mystery of Nazareth is an antidote for today’s insanity, as we run and run — here, there, anywhere — hoping to find the answers we seek. Maybe a return to Nazareth, to normalcy, to ordinariness can save us.
The simplicity of Nazareth is not self-centered or involuted. It is a radical availability at every moment to anyone in need, to my neighbor, whether it be my mother, brother, husband, the sick or poor person down the street. It means being inserted into the midst of humanity, right into the marketplace.
Mary certainly didn’t sit at home and twiddle her thumbs. She was a servant from whose heart a hymn of love and joy flowed continuously to the Lord. Her hands constantly served Jesus and Joseph, and her love sought out and ministered to her neighbor in need.
This ordinariness is almost too simple for us to grasp because we are so used to solving complex problems and dealing with very advanced technology. In fact, it would be unthinkable had not Jesus himself come to give us the example. Perhaps Nazareth really does hold a secret for us today.
[photo: Fr. Paul Bechard works on the building of Our Lady of the Wood Chapel in 1972.]
