Divine Obedience: Lessons from Nazareth after the Temple
Why did Christ spend nearly 91% of his time on earth doing 'nothing,' quietly subject to Our Lady and St Joseph in an obscure town, before beginning his ministry?
Why did Christ spend nearly 91% of his time on earth doing 'nothing,' quietly subject to Our Lady and St Joseph in an obscure town, before beginning his ministry?
In this piece, Father Coleridge tells us…
Why Christ’s Hidden Life at Nazareth was a significant lesson to us all
How his hidden years revealed how daily life, lived in quiet obedience, sanctifies and provides a model for Christian virtue.
What these years teach humanity, especially in relation to how obedience counters the disobedience of sin and brings forth divine grace and spiritual fruitfulness.
He shows us that the years at Nazareth offer timeless lessons in humility, submission, and the eternal value of following God's will.
Subjection and Growth
The Thirty Years—Our Lord’s Infancy & Hidden Life
Ch. XIX, pp 362-370.
St. Luke ii. 50–52; Story of the Gospels, § 16
Burns and Oates, London, 1885 (1915 edition).
Headings and some line breaks added.
Sung on the feast of the Holy Family
Close of the account of the Hidden Life
The Evangelist closes his narrative of the Hidden Life of our Lord with a few short sentences, which cover a period of more than half of the whole sojourn of our Lord upon earth, while at the same time they seem to give, in the designs of God, an account of our Lord’s existence during so long a time, which is adequate in its pregnancy for our information and guidance.
So marvellous is the power of the simplest language when used under the guidance of the Holy Ghost, that it may be said that the contemplations of the saints on this great part of the history of the Incarnation have never exhausted its meaning, and that the fulness of particular knowledge concerning it which awaits us in Heaven will never go beyond the lines laid down in these few sentences. They must be taken in connection with what has been told us before.
As the narrative of the remaining in Jerusalem was not a discordant break in the former statements about the Life at Nazareth, but a record which continued them and threw new light upon them, so also the information which we are now to consider with regard to the remainder of the Thirty Years grows naturally, in the spiritual order, out of the last narrative on which we have just been occupied, and is not fully understood unless it be considered in connection therewith.
The three statements
“And He went down with them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject to them. And His Mother kept all these words in her heart. And Jesus increased in wisdom and age, and grace with God and with men.”
Here there are three principal statements, two concerning our Lord, and one concerning our Blessed Lady.
It is said, in the first place, that our Lord did not remain any longer separate from His parents, but returned with them to Nazareth, and was subject to them. The kind of life which He had led hitherto in the Holy House was resumed, after the mystery of the Twelfth Year had taken place, after He had remained in Jerusalem, and told His Mother, when she had found Him, that He must be in the things of His Father.
In the second place, we are told that His Mother kept all these words, meaning things as well as words, in her heart. This must be considered in connection with what has just before been said, that she and St. Joseph had not understood the words of our Lord about the things of His Father.
Lastly, we are told, as a summary account of all that happened during these eighteen years, that Jesus increased in wisdom and age and grace with God and men. These, therefore, are the three heads of our present consideration.
No change of plan
With regard to the first, it is surely a matter at which we might, at first sight, wonder, that our Lord, having once separated Himself from our Lady and St. Joseph, and placed Himself in some degree before the eyes of the public by His appearance in the sacred school, should immediately abandon the work which He had begun, and return to His former state of inaction and subjection.
It cannot be thought of for a moment that there was any change of plan about this, or that He meant, as people might have said, to give up the things of His Father and again hide Himself at Nazareth, on account of the remonstrances of His Blessed Mother and St. Joseph.
Nor can it be imagined for a moment that the blessed pair to whose charge He was committed could have wished for any abandonment of a work begun, any change in a course which was required either by the interests of His Father or by His express command.
Neither could our Lord put His hand to the plough, and then turn back, nor could Mary and Joseph wish that He should do so.
Behests of the Father paramount
It may therefore be reasonably concluded that what was required for the things of His Father by His presence in the school of the Temple had been already accomplished. He had shown His love for, and left His blessing to consecrate the school for ever, as one of the most precious institutions of His Kingdom.
It was not His design, or the command of His Father, that He should continue there. His tender age made the display of wisdom which had been seen most striking in the eyes of all who witnessed it, and the incident remains for ever as a proof of the perfection of His knowledge of Divine things from the very first.
So far, it contributes another weapon to the armoury of the Church, which she can use, and has used, in the refutation of heresies concerning His Person. But He did all things in His Human Life with the most perfect fitness and propriety, and on this account it might have been out of keeping with the spirit which guided Him throughout if He had now taken on Himself the office of Teacher.
And, in the second place, as we have seen, the Divine purpose which was to be served by this mystery was also accomplished, for He had shown that His Father’s behests were with Him of paramount and exclusive importance, and that it was to be the rule of His Kingdom that father and mother were to be left, were even to be ignored, when there was an occasion of obeying a Divine call.
It was not, therefore, in any way inconsistent with the mystery which had taken place, that He should now leave the Temple with His Mother and St. Joseph, and return to Nazareth.
A further meaning
This, however, does not quite exhaust the meaning of the words before us. They do not signify simply, that there was no inconsistency in our Lord’s conduct on the two occasions, when He had first left His parents and then gone home with them.
The words signify that His action, in the second instance, was a carrying out of the principle which had guided Him in the first, that as “the things of the Father” had been served at first by His remaining in Jerusalem, so now they were to be served by His going down to Nazareth and being subject to His parents.
Thus it may be thought that, as the abiding in the Holy City must have been in obedience to a special and particular mandate of His Father, so also the return to Nazareth, after this incident, must have been the subject also of the same kind of guidance. This throws a new light on the words of the Sacred Text.
Our Lord’s subjection commanded
We cannot doubt that our Lord had been subject to His parents from the very first. He had now reached an age at which He would naturally be expected to exercise somewhat less of childish dependence upon them. But up to the age at which He had now arrived, His dependence and subjection were necessary, if He was to live at all like others of the same period of life.
It seems, therefore, to be signified to us by the words of the Evangelist, that our Lord now showed a more complete and full subjection to His parents than before. Not that before there had been anything wanting in the perfection of His obedience, but that it had been less remarkable on account of His youth.
Moreover, He had just, as it seems, declared most pointedly that He was independent of them. The perfection of His subjection was thus far more conspicuous after the remaining in Jerusalem than it had been before. It had now the character of the freely-chosen subjection of a man, instead of that of the natural submission of a child.
It had also the character of being an obedience especially enjoined by God, beyond the natural obedience and subjection which all are to pay to their parents in all lawful matters. It had a consecration of the same kind and nature as that which characterized the mystery which has been considered in the last chapter. The Divine call had then, for a time, taken Him away from His parents without a note of warning. The same Divine call now led Him to His former home, and enjoined on Him the subjection to His parents of which the Evangelist speaks.
Our Lady’s pondering
This, perhaps, may furnish us with the reason why it is here again specially mentioned that our Blessed Lady kept all these words in her heart. The action of our Lord in remaining in Jerusalem had come on her, as it seems, altogether unexpectedly, except that, since the prophecy of Simeon, her life must have been a perpetual preparation for the Cross.
When she had questioned Him as to the reason for His leaving them, He had answered her with words which, as we have seen, were not at once intelligible. But Mary knew well that they contained a truth which it was the office of her prudent and loving mind to work out for itself under the guidance of the Holy Ghost.
She could compare His words with His acts, and His acts with His words. She would marvel, perhaps, at His accompanying them home now, as much as she had marvelled at His quitting them before. She would take His words about the things of His Father as the interpretation of the one line of conduct as well as of the other.
Thus she might come to see the full wisdom of God, to recognize the degree in which our Lord hung upon the guidance of His Father, which was the principle of His Life, and to see also the bearing of what He had done and what He had said, and what He was now doing, on the great work on which He was at this time engaged: the work of laying the foundations of Christian life in every department by His own works before He began to teach.
Wonderfulness of the mystery
This divinely appointed subjection of our Lord for so many years after the mystery of which we have lately been speaking is certainly one of the most marvellous features in the whole Gospel history.
We may consider it, in the first place, as establishing, in the most unquestionable manner, the unique value which is attached to obedience and subjection in the eyes of God. For thirty years the Saviour and Light of the World is engaged in teaching this lesson rather than any other.
The world rolls on along its course of wickedness, and injustice, and impiety; the Teacher of the world is present, full of grace and truth, ready to pay the ransom for all its sins, and to make to it the great salutary revelations, for need of which it is perishing before His eyes.
But yet He does not speak, or teach, or show His power, or assert His mission, because He must spend thirty years out of the thirty-three in giving this practical example of obedience. His obedience and subjection are rendered, indeed, to the holiest of His creatures, Mary and Joseph.
But what is their holiness, what their wisdom, but graces which they have received, in however large a share, from His perfect fulness?
Divine purpose
It is no romance of attachment to that blessed home, to those most loving souls, which keeps Him there. For He has just shown to them and to the world that He would not hesitate to leave them at once, and not even to tell them beforehand of His leaving them.
The neighbours and kinsfolk and acquaintances among whom the parents had sought for the Blessed Child must have known of their loss. These may have thought that there had been some reversal in Him of the plan on which He had acted, when He appeared with them once more.
How different are the thoughts of God from the thoughts of men, the ways of God from the ways of men! Our Lord’s Life was always the display of the most sublime wisdom of God, and God saw that His own Divine purpose of the salvation and instruction of mankind was better served by this subjection of eighteen years than by any other possible employment of His time.
And this subjection, as has been said, was undertaken by our Lord after He had shown, in the most striking manner, that He was perfectly independent of all human ties of affection in choosing the path He followed.
Importance of obedience
Obedience is the law and the happiness of Heaven, as it was meant, at the beginning, to be the law and the happiness of earth. Our Lord was to be obedient unto death, even the death of the Cross. But His obedience on Mount Calvary, though it was to be the salvation of the world, was not all that was required for the instruction and regulation of life.
The obedience and subjection of our daily life were to be founded rather on the thirty years of Nazareth than on the few hours of the Passion. It was during the thirty years that our Lord lived the life of other children and other men, and thus it is on His example at this time that the rules of our daily life are to be framed.
Moreover, if we consider the whole immeasurable mass and weight of the sins which He was to expiate on the Cross, the sins which it broke His Heart to contemplate as His own burden in the Agony of Gethsemani, what was the principle and root of them all but disobedience? It began with Adam and Eve in Paradise, and since that time it has been, in its various manifestations, the corruption, the poison, the degradation of all their children.
The lesson of obedience was the one necessary medicine for all the ills of human life, and of all the lessons of heavenly or earthly wisdom there is none which so much requires the teaching of example rather than any other. Thus the years of Nazareth would outweigh the rest of our Lord’s Life in the fruitfulness of their teaching, as well as in their duration, if they could teach mankind the misery of independence and the rich fertility of the blessings which spring from subjection.
From Fr Henry James Coleridge, The Thirty Years, Our Lord’s Infancy & Hidden Life, ‘The Epiphany’, published 1885, this edition Burns and Oates, London, 1915, pp 362-369
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