Homily

A few days have passed since Christmas, and the liturgy brought us immediately to Nazareth so as to have us encounter that remarkable family. With this liturgical celebration, the Church wants to underline the fact that Jesus too needed a family; to be surrounded by the love of a father and a mother. Although the Gospels shed little light on Jesus’ family life, reporting only a few episodes from his childhood, family marked Jesus’ life for thirty years. The last sentence from the Gospel passage we read this Sunday is very meaningful: "Then he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them. His mother treasured all these things in her heart. And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favour" (Lk 2:51-52).
These few words, in fact, are worth the thirty years of which we call his "hidden life" in Nazareth. To us, obsessed with efficiency, the question immediately comes up: Why did Jesus live hidden like that for such a long time? Would he not have been able to put those years, or at least some of them, to good use, announcing the Gospel, healing the sick, basically helping as much as possible whoever was in need? Putting aside the consideration that we do not know what he may have done, if we were to place our attention more on the Gospel, we would perhaps find ourselves hearing "you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things" (Mk 8:33). Certainly those thirty years help us to better understand Paul’s words: "being born in human likeness." Yes, Jesus lived with a family, like many, as to say that salvation is not extraneous to people’s ordinary life. Perhaps for this reason the Church has considered ‘apocryphal’ all those stories created by the tender curiosity of the early Christians, who wanted to make extraordinary and miraculous the childhood and the adolescence of Jesus. We know from the Gospel that his life in Nazareth was marked by normality: there are no miracles or healings, no sermons, no crowds flocking around him; everything happens "normally" in line with the traditions of a pious, Israelite family. And yet, today’s celebration suggests that also those years had been holy.
Jesus’ family was an ordinary family, made up of people who lived by the work of their hands; a family, therefore, neither miserable nor well off, but perhaps one that had trouble to make ends meet. Without a doubt, however, they were a model: they loved each other, even if probably misunderstandings, rebukes and even corrections were not absent, as one notes for example from the episode we heard today of Jesus’ disappearance in the temple. That day Mary and Joseph did not understand what Jesus was doing. They even went so far as to scold him.
Certainly Joseph and Mary observed the religious traditions of Israel, and they felt the obligation of providing Jesus with an education. The Deuteronomy prescribed: "Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. Recite them to your children, and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise." (Deut 6:6). And it would be beautiful to think back to the religious traditions of a pious family from that time so as to better understand Jesus’ life and his family life in Nazareth. It would move us to hear the prayers that those three must have said in the morning and in the evening; we would be edified to learn how the adolescent Jesus performed his first religious and civil duties; and how as a young worker he laboured alongside his father Joseph. We would be attracted by his commitment in listening to Scripture, praying the Psalms, and following many other traditions. How much mothers would learn from Mary’s attentive care for her son! How much fathers would draw from Joseph’s example! He was a righteous man, who dedicated his life to supporting and defending not himself, but the child and his mother.
A profundity resides in that family that the eyes of his contemporaries did not capture, but it is revealed to us by the Gospel: it is Jesus’ "centrality" to the family. This is the "treasure" of the "hidden life": Mary and Joseph welcomed that Son, raised him and saw him grow in their midst and even in their heart. Likewise, their affection and understanding of him grew. This is why the family in Nazareth is holy: because it was centred on Jesus. The concern that they felt when they were not able to find the twelve-year old Jesus should also be ours when we are far from him. We can go three days, even, without ever thinking about the Lord, without reading the Gospel, without feeling the need for God’s friendship. Mary and Joseph set out and found him, not among friends and family members—it is difficult to find him there—but in the temple, among the teachers.
We, too, discover Jesus in this celebration. He speaks to us, the important and worldly, full of our wisdom and hardened in our opinions. And he offers us the most important lesson for our life, that we are all children of God. He’s told us this since he was a child, since the opening pages of the Gospel. And he repeats it to us from high on the cross when he trusts completely, like a son, in the Father. The Evangelist notes, in conclusion, that Jesus in Nazareth "increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favour." We too must grow in the wisdom and love of Jesus. Nazareth, a village on the outskirts of Galilee and home of the Holy Family’s ordinary life, represents the entire life of the disciple, who welcomes, cares for and lets grow the Lord in his own heart and life. It is then not by chance that the name "Nazareth" means "one who preserves." Nazareth is Mary, who "treasured all these things in her heart." Nazareth is the homeland and the vocation of every disciple - even if the world will continue to ask: "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?"