YOUCAT Catechism + Catechism of the Catholic Church Lesson 86
Ave Maria series
86 Why did Jesus wait thirty years to begin his public life?
Jesus wanted to share a normal life with us and thus sanctify our everyday routine. [531-534, 564]
St. Joseph and Jesus, by Georges de La Tour, 1640s. .....86
Jesus was a child who received love and affection from his parents and was brought up by them. Thus he increased “in wisdom and in stature, and in favor with God and man” (Luke 2:52); he belonged to a Jewish village community and took part in its religious rituals; he learned a trade and had to prove his ability as a craftsman. The fact that God in Jesus willed to be born into a human family and to grow up in it has made the family a place where God is present and a prototype of a helping community.
In the family children “learn to love inasmuch as they are unconditionally loved, they learn respect for others inasmuch as they are respected, they learn to know the face of God inasmuch as they receive a first revelation of it from a father and a mother full of attention in their regard.” -- Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Letter to Bishops on the “Collaboration of Men and Women in the Church and in the World”, May 31, 2004
[531-534, 564]
The mysteries of Jesus' hidden life
531 During the greater part of his life Jesus shared the condition of the vast majority of human beings: a daily life spent without evident greatness, a life of manual labor. His religious life was that of a Jew obedient to the law of God (compare Galatians 4:4),221a life in the community. From this whole period it is revealed to us that Jesus was "obedient" to his parents and that he "increased in wisdom and in stature, and in favor with God and man (Luke 2:51-52)."222--Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition
532 Jesus' obedience to his mother and legal father fulfills the fourth commandment perfectly and was the temporal image of his filial obedience to his Father in heaven. The everyday obedience of Jesus to Joseph and Mary both announced and anticipated the obedience of Holy Thursday: "Not my will. . . (Luke 22:42)""223The obedience of Christ in the daily routine of his hidden life was already inaugurating his work of restoring what the disobedience of Adam had destroyed (compare Romans 5:19).224--CCC
533 The hidden life at Nazareth allows everyone to enter into fellowship with Jesus by the most ordinary events of daily life: --CCC
The home of Nazareth is the school where we begin to understand the life of Jesus - the school of the Gospel. First, then, a lesson of silence. May esteem for silence, that admirable and indispensable condition of mind, revive in us. . . 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. . . 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. . . To conclude, I want to greet all the workers of the world, holding up to them their great pattern their brother who is God (Paul VI at Nazareth, 5 January 1964: Liturgy of the Hours, Feast of the Holy Family, Office of Readings).225–CCC
534 The finding of Jesus in the temple is the only event that breaks the silence of the Gospels about the hidden years of Jesus (compare Luke 2:41-52)..226 Here Jesus lets us catch a glimpse of the mystery of his total consecration to a mission that flows from his divine sonship: "Did you not know that I must be about my Father's work? (Luke 2:49alt)"227
Mary and Joseph did not understand these words, but they accepted them in faith. Mary "kept all these things in her heart" during the years Jesus remained hidden in the silence of an ordinary life.–CCC
564 By his obedience to Mary and Joseph, as well as by his humble work during the long years in Nazareth, Jesus gives us the example of holiness in the daily life of family and work.
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