Nazareth

The feast days of the Virgin Mary move us to contemplate the astonishing truth that lies at the heart of our faith:  In Jesus, God has come to us in the flesh!  Today’s Solemnity of Saint Joseph, Husband of the Virgin Mary, offers us another window into that truth.

In Luke’s gospel for today (second gospel) we read:  “He went down with them and came to Nazareth and was obedient to them.”  Through many Marian feast days, including the feast of the Mother of God during the Christmas season, we focus on the birth of Jesus from the womb of the Virgin Mary.  But here, through this gospel passage, we see Jesus, no longer an infant, but on the way to becoming a young man.  Though he identifies with the temple as his “Father’s house,” he has an earthly home as well, the home at Nazareth. And in that home, Jesus not only has a human mother, but a human father as well.

What was it like for Jesus, Mary and Joseph in the home at Nazareth?  What did they talk about?  What was the shape of their daily life?  The gospels never answer those questions, but that very fact allows us to imagine that, to a certain extent, life in that home was not too different from life in our own homes.  Life in the home at Nazareth was an ordinary and even obscure life; yet, God in Jesus chose to dwell there. 

This simple fact, expressed so quietly in today’s feast, invites us to look around at our own home today, to believe that, in all of its ordinariness and perhaps even obscurity, it is a home where God chooses to dwell each day.  May we today, through the prayers of Joseph, rejoice in the nearness of God who once chose to live in a human home, and chooses to do so today as well.