The Hidden Life of Jesus

 

 

Over the years I have reflected upon the first 30 years of the life of Jesus lived in Nazareth. These years are typically called "the Hidden Years at Nazareth." I am reminded every year of these Hidden Years by the Feast of the Holy Family (this past Sunday) in the Christmas Season.

 

The time of Jesus’s childhood and youth in Nazareth is called "hidden" because we have no information about these years. What marks these years at Nazareth is how ordinary the life of Jesus was before his baptism at age 30 and the beginning of his public ministry from that time.

 

Young Jesus in the Carpenter's Shop

He was referred to as a carpenter’s son and a carpenter himself and we assume he worked a carpenter’s job with Joseph. He would have lived by manual labor; he would have worked every day except the Sabbath when he attended the synagogue; we are told he could read, which is not something one could assume in his economic class; he would have celebrated the religious festivals and events of Jewish life–such as weddings, funerals and the Jewish holidays (his family traveled to Jerusalem for the Passover each year (see Luke 2:41); and he would have shared family meals and life in the simplicity of Nazareth, which was such a backwater town that there was a saying; "Can any good come out of Nazareth?" (See John 1:46. Nazareth may have had less than 500 residents at the time of Jesus; today it has a population of 210,000)



Artist Rendition of 1st Century Narareth by Wm. Holman Hunt 1827-1910

The birth of Jesus is recorded by Matthew and Luke as anything but ordinary; but then, when the family located to Nazareth, we are told nothing more about Jesus, except for one story (Luke 2:41-52), until he begins his public ministry. In those Hidden Years he presumably did not teach anything. He performed no miracles. He didn’t seem to stand out in anyway. We can be fairly certain of this because when he did begin to teach and perform miracles, his own family and townspeople were surprised. They thought they knew him, that he was a carpenter’s son only, and yet now he does things he apparently never did before. (See Mark 6:1-3 HERE)

 

In that one story of childhood (besides the infancy narratives) found in the Gospel of Luke (2:41-52), the twelve year old Jesus shows awareness that God is his Father; but he returns with his parents to Nazareth and Luke 2:52 simply says "And Jesus grew in wisdom and age and grace with God and men."

 

I derive encouragement from these Hidden Years of Jesus. It tells me that our ordinary lives, our ordinary work and family life, our lack of doing anything particularly extraordinary, is also a sharing in the life of Christ. I am not condoning under-performing or not seeking excellence when achievable; but most of our lives are ordinary and also grace-filled, as were those first 30 years of Jesus’ life. Prior to the extraordinary aspects of the life of Jesus foreshadowed by his conception and birth, the ordinary days of Jesus were how he grew in grace for 30 years.

 

I think of my life and ministry. A typical day for me is performing the ordinary tasks of my priesthood. For example, I celebrated an early Mass today, prayed, worked on some parish matters, did a funeral, met with a couple preparing for marriage, met with a family to prepare another funeral, went to visit some parishioners in Nursing Homes, and so the day went. Nothing dramatic, nothing that would be published in the news, but those things were important to the people involved and it is important that I stay close to Christ in order to be grace-filled in his "ordinary" service.

 

 

The same for each of us. There is something very rich to be discovered in the Hidden Years at Nazareth.

 

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ON the Feast of Stephen

When I became a Catholic I no longer held the mainly Protestant view that Christmas is only one day of the year; rather I learned that Christmas is a season that extends from December 25th to Epiphany and beyond to the Solemnity Baptism of the Lord.

 

(The Christmas Season was originally 12 Days and ended with Epiphany on January 6. The Feast of the Baptism of the Lord was added to the Season in 1969 to be celebrated the Sunday after Epiphany. In the United States Epiphany is celebrated on the first Sunday after January 1)

 

“The Stoning of St. Stephen,” by Pietro da Cortona, C. 1660

So it seemed odd to me at the time that on the second day of the Christmas Season, i.e. on December 26th, the Church celebrates the Feast of the Martyr Stephen. (I wasn’t familiar with the Christmas carol "Good king Wenceslas": "Good King Wenceslas looked out/ On the feast of Stephen...") We are supposed to be celebrating a Christmas Season of joy and yet the second day of this Season is about a martyr’s suffering and death?

 

A number of years after I became a Catholic and had been ordained a Priest, I began to understand Christmas in a deeper manner than simply the birthday of Jesus in Bethlehem, as important as this is. I began to understand the purpose of this birth much better, though it had always been there in the Angel’s message to the shepherds: "Unto you is born this day a Savior, who is Christ the Lord."

 

Thus, the Son of God took flesh and was born of Mary to be our Savior: to grow up and lead us God through his life, and his death on the Cross and his Resurrection to new life. All this is the mystery of God’s love which forgives and converts us from sin’s refusal to love as God loves. One way I heard this described is that the Creche is always in the shadow of the Cross. I would add that the Creche is also illuminated by the Resurrection.

 

So, the martyrdom of St. Stephen is in imitation of following the suffering and death of Christ. Stephen even says: " "Lord, do not hold this sin against them" (Acts 7:60. Compare to Jesus’s words on the Cross: "Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing") Christ’s death demonstrated the great love of God for us; Stephen’s death demonstrates his love for God.

 

This puts me in mind of how God’s love is a sacrificial love: it gives to the other and this sometimes includes suffering for the loved on. So this love is what brought the Son of God to us, and this was already being revealed in Bethlehem at his birth.

 

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Advent Slowing Down



I read yesterday a small Advent meditation/prayer:

 

"Dear Jesus . . . It happens every year. I think that this will be the year

that I have a reflective Advent.

 

I look forward to Sunday and this new season, Jesus. But all around me

are the signs rushing me to Christmas and some kind of celebration

that equates spending with love.

 

I need your help. I want to slow my world down. This year, more than ever,

I need Advent, these weeks of reflection and longing for hope in the darkness.

 

Jesus, this year, help me to have that longing. Help me to feel it in my heart

and be aware of the hunger and thirst in my own soul. I know it is about you, Jesus.

You are not missing from my life, but I might be missing the awareness

of all of the places you are present there.

 

Be with me, my dear Friend. Guide me in these weeks to what you

want to show me this Advent. Help me to be vulnerable enough to ask you

to lead me to the place of my own weakness, the very place

where I will find you the most deeply embedded in my heart,

loving me without limits."

 

From Creighton University Collaborative Ministries:

 

 

I have always liked Christmas. Last year I shared about the Christmas of my childhood [See Entry]. It is those past Christmases of our childhood that embed in our hearts a lifelong love for Christmas.

 

I worry about Christmas sometimes. The business world depends upon Christmas for revenue. If we simplified Christmas too much it would wreck the economy; but are we responsible to maintain the addiction of business to Christmas spending? I have nothing against gift-giving and decorating and festivity, as long as it doesn’t create personal debt.

 

I worry also about the hectic pace that surrounds the weeks before Christmas. There’s a lot of pressure upon people and families to "get everything done" before Christmas that we think or have been told must be done. The hectic pace and all the Christmas Shopping Push threatens to drown out any sense of Advent with its more reflective mood.

 

The meditation that begins this entry speaks of my own longing to slow down. I could long for this slowing down at almost any time or season in my year! I suppose most people feel busy almost all the time, like I do.

 

One year I was rushing around doing shopping and errands before Christmas. I had given myself too many things to do in too short a time and as I changed lanes in the busy traffic in front of the mall, I ran into the car in front of me. It wasn’t serious but it meant waiting a long time for the traffic police to come and to get my ticket of shame. Not only had I slowed down my schedule, but also the schedule of the woman whose car I bumped.

 

That taught me a lesson: I needed to slow down. As I said, I love Christmas. I resolved that if while doing the things to get ready for Christmas, I wasn’t enjoying myself because of stress or hurry, I needed to slow down and retrieve the joy.

 

Advent is a great time for me to heed that message again, and to especially slow down for prayer and to become more aware of the places and people where the Lord is coming to me.

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About the End of Christmas

I've switched to a new computer; I mentioned a few weeks ago that my "old" computer of 4 or 5 years was having hard drive problems and was too expensive to repair. So now with the new computer I am also working with Windows 8, a new version by Microsoft. It's very different from Windows 7, but I'll spare you the analysis. Changing computers and Operating Systems is like beginning a new relationship and learning all the wonderful as well as quirky things that go with that. Let me just say that I am researching quite a number of utilities and apps that will make Windows 8 look like Windows 7!


My new computer: Seannie

This is the last week of the Catholic Christmas Season. The last day of Christmas is the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord (this year Jan. 13). I personally would support the former calculation of the Christmas Season as the 12 Days of Christmas, from Dec. 25 to Jan. 6; Jan. 6 being the Feast of the Epiphany. I probably feel this way because the commercialization of Christmas means that we have an ever earlier shopping season before Christmas with Christmas music, parties, TV Christmas specials, etc. Imagine if we did that with Easter, making all the weeks before Easter a time of Easter music, parties, shopping, etc. What would Lent be? As it is, Advent is eclipsed by all this "pre-Christmas promotion" and when the real Christmas Season arrives (beginning on Dec. 25, imagine that), many are ready for Christmas to be over. For many Protestants it is over. But for Catholics, at least officially, we have several more weeks of Christmas; thus this Sunday there will still be all the Christmas decorations  in the church.

In some cultures in the past, the Christmas Season might not end until Feb. 2, which is the Feast of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple. After the Second Vatican Council in 1962, the Church changed the liturgical calendar so that the Sunday after Epiphany would be the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord in the Jordan. In the United States, the celebration of the Epiphany is transferred from Jan. 6 to a Sunday (thus throwing off the famous 12 Days of Christmas). Actually, Epiphany (which means manifestation or revelation, as in  the revelation of the divinity of Christ) celebrates three manifestations: the Magi coming to worship the Christ Child, the Baptism of Christ, and the miracle at Cana, when Christ turned water into wine. In the Orthodox Church, as ancient as the Roman Catholic Church, Epiphany focuses mostly upon the Baptism of Christ. But we created a separate feast for the Baptism, as mentioned.
 

I like the certain logic of all this. Christmas celebrates the birth of Christ, that the Son of God took flesh and lived among us. This is the beginning of Jesus' life. The Feast of the Holy Family, which is the Sunday after Christmas, celebrates his early life, the little we know of it. Epiphany, in the Catholic Church, also focuses on a childhood event: the coming of the Magi. Then we have this Feast of his Baptism. That brings us to the beginng of his public ministry, at around age 30.
 

By the way, when  Lent begins, the story will be taken up again and the first Sunday of Lent observes the temptations of Christ in the desert after his Baptism. Isn't it interesting that Christ walks with us all through the events of our life; but also, we spiritually, through the liturgy, walk with him through the events of his life. And each event has a very rich lesson for our lives, if we can take the time to listen and think about it.

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Making Room for Jesus

On the Solemnity of the Mother of God (Jan.) I mentioned the detail given in Luke’s Gospel about how there was no room for Mary and Joseph in the inn. This detail has captured the Christian imagination for 2000 years. I said that if there was a sign over our heads, like in the cartoons, would it say "No room for Jesus"?

As I also noted, my maxim is that "the preacher preaches first to himself." I might not even pose this "No room" as a question if it weren’t for the fact that I often find that I’m crowding out Jesus from my consciousness with all the clutter in my mind and heart.

Of course, there is room to various degrees in my heart for Jesus; my entire heart and mind are consecrated to him through Baptism. Also, as a Priest, my life is dedicated to "preparing the way of the Lord" into my life and the lives of those to whom I minister. But still I find my "inner room" (aka "my soul") can get fairly filled with clutter, not unlike my personal study.

When I think of interior clutter, I’m thinking of all the things, concerns, distractions, demands, technologies which preoccupy me to the point that I seem to have little time for entering within myself to seek Jesus. That demands clearing space in my schedule, as well as in my mind. It requires prayer and reflection.  Also in Luke’s Gospel about Mary, it says that she pondered all the things about Jesus in her heart. (see Luke 2:19) That should be the goal of every follower of Jesus.

I could pose a meditation for myself: (1) What do I think is cluttering my inner room? (2) What can I eliminate and what can I retain for Christ? (3) Can I still envision Christ within me, even if I don't have my inner life in perfect order?

Well, I had an image of what I'd like my inner room to look like (via a long Google search) but Blogger won't upload it. So maybe next time.

 

(For a mediatation on this same subject, see "Bread on the Trail: Making Room for God," by Deacon Keith Fournier HERE)

 

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He Came to Lead Us into Beauty

"Good Shepherd" by William Dyce

At Christmas, especially, many Catholic Churches are decorated as beautifully as possible. Some Protestant churches are suspicious of such decorations, fearful that all that "stuff" will distract from a "pure" worship and focus upon God. Yet the Catholic instinct, as soon as the early persecutions ended (by mid-4th century), has been that beauty in our churches focuses and deepens our appreciation for God’s beauty, for we believe God is All-Beauty.

I have reflected upon this previously (HERE) and I believe it is part of the sacramental approach of the Catholic Church, shared by the Orthodox Churches and to some degree by certain Protestant churches, as well. 

This is how the Catechism (CCC#41) explains it:

 "All creatures bear a certain resemblance to God, most especially man, created in the image and likeness of God. The manifold perfections of creatures - their truth, their goodness, their beauty all reflect the infinite perfection of God. Consequently we can name God by taking his creatures' perfections as our starting point, 'for from the greatness and beauty of created things comes a corresponding perception of their Creator'."  (Wisdom 13:5)

I have studied the subject of "religious beauty" for a number of years now. It is quite fascinating to me. I remember once reading a certain Christian author’s critique of the Church’s preaching and teaching. He said, many do not dispute that what we teach is true or reasonable (though many others  would disagree); rather we have not made our teaching and preaching beautiful enough. Love should attract...

The late Pope John Paul II wrote about the "Consecrated life" of those men and women in religious orders, such as Sisters. But we are first consecrated by Baptism, so I believe that the Pope’s words can apply appropriately to all of us:

Saint Augustine says: "Beautiful is God, the Word with God ... He is beautiful in heaven, beautiful on earth; beautiful in the womb, beautiful in his parents' arms, beautiful in his miracles, beautiful in his sufferings; beautiful in inviting to life, beautiful in not worrying about death, beautiful in giving up his life and beautiful in taking it up again; he is beautiful on the Cross, beautiful in the tomb, beautiful in heaven. Listen to the song with understanding, and let not the weakness of the flesh distract your eyes from the splendour of his beauty."

The quest for divine beauty impels consecrated persons to care for the deformed image of God on the faces of their brothers and sisters, faces disfigured by hunger, faces disillusioned by political promises, faces humiliated by seeing their culture despised, faces frightened by constant and indiscriminate violence, the anguished faces of minors, the hurt and humiliated faces of women, the tired faces of migrants who are not given a warm welcome, the faces of the elderly who are without even the minimum conditions for a dignified life.

              Quoted in John Paul II, POST-SYNODAL APOSTOLIC EXHORTATION
                                        VITA CONSECRATA. March25, 1996: 24 &75)

For a long time I have seen that in our Catholic Faith, Beauty and Justice are partners in serving God. Beauty without justice (especially caring for those unjustly treated), could lead to an escapist aestheticism. But justice without beauty would be a diminished justice, since justice is to bring us into "right relationship" with  God, who is Just, Good, True, and Beautiful in his love. (To read more about this: HERE)

If we follow Christ, he will lead us as the Good and Beautiful Shepherd into his beauty and truth and empower us to work to restore beauty and dignity to people’s lives, the original beauty for which God created us. This is why he came into our world and why we make Christmas as beautiful as we can.

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Christmas Wonder

I have always loved Christmas. Some of my earliest memories as a child (3 or 4 years old) were of the Christmas tree and its ornaments and colored lights. Being a baby boomer, I remember those big ole painted light bulbs on the tree:

I remember the shiny Christmas ornaments that after a few uses had the paint chip off. Like these:

I remember the tree sprayed with this white stuff that looked like snow and decorated with tinsel. I found a picture on the Internet that remeinded me of those Christmas mornings with tree and gifts and stockings:

I can remember being taken downtown as a child to Birmingham where I was born. I again was perhaps 4 years old since my family moved to Norfolk, Virginia when I was 5. I can remember seeing the decorations strung over the streets and the light posts had big bells or bows as decorations.

It certainly made an impression upon me. Everything about Christmas impressed my young imagination with a delight of color and song and decoration and beauty. It was all about wonder and still is.

My family was Methodist but not overly religious. We didn’t even have a manger when I was growing up. But I have a very fond memory of every Christmas Eve my mother would read to me, and then also to my brother and sister when they came along, two stories. The first was The Night Before Christmas. The second was the account of the birth of Jesus according to the Gospel of Luke. I of course loved The Night Before Christmas and its pictures of Santa and flying Reindeer. I liked the sound of "Now dash away, dash away, dash away all."

But even my childish mind also liked the story about Jesus. It has details to capture our imagination, still, even as adults: the journey to Bethlehem, the fact that there was no room for Mary and Joseph in the inn, the birth among animals, the angels and shepherds.

In 1965, when I was 10 years old, I saw the premier of a "Charlie Brown Christmas Special." At one point Charlie Brown asks: ""Isn’t there ANYONE who knows what Christmas is all about?!?!" And then Linus recites from Luke 2. It was the story my mother read to me every year! I was so impressed that Linus could recite it from memory that I also memorized the Christmas story from the Gospel of Luke. (CBS executives wanted to delete that part by Linus when it was first produced but thankfully left it in. Imagine that. Christ is, after all, "the reason for the season")

One last remembrance. As a child, I was also told continuously before Christmas that if I didn’t behave, Santa would bring me a bag of switches (I suppose the Southern equivalent of coal). I’m sure I was more "naughty than nice," children get so wound-up before Christmas, yet Santa always delivered! What a lesson of grace in my childhood.

As I have grown older, I have come to think this is the true message of Christmas: grace comes even when we don’t expect it or especially when we don’t deserve it. Love is that way and Christmas is about God’s love. But like love, we must accept it; like a gift at Christmas we must open it; like the wonder of Christmas, we must stop and see it again as a child. These are some of the deeper reasons I love Christmas.

　

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