Nazareth Spirituality –

“We must imitate Jesus by doing our life’s work for people’s salvation in such a way that the word “Jesus”, “Savior” is the perfect expression of what we are, just as it signifies perfectly what he is.” ~~~ Charles de Foucald

 

Charles de Foucald lived in Nazareth many years, working silently as a gardener in a Poor Clare convent, and meditating on the Gospels, particularly the life of Jesus in Nazareth, with mother Mary and father Joseph.

“Imitate Jesus in his hidden life. Be as small and poor as he is,” De Foucald wrote in his journal. “Work for our daily bread farming, gardening. Pray at night, work by day, love and contemplate Jesus unceasingly with all my heart, in poverty, holiness, and love.”

“Silently, secretly, like Jesus in Nazareth: obscurely, like him, pass unknown on earth like a voyager in the night; in poverty and in toil, humbly, with charity, like him; defenseless and mute before injustice, like him; letting myself, like a lamb, be shorn and immolated without resistance or protest; imitating in everything Jesus in Nazareth and Jesus on the cross.”

 

Pope Francis praised Charles de Foucald as a role model for gospel-living adequate to meet the needs of the present circumstances of the modern world.

“Charles de Foucald, perhaps like few others, grasped the import of the spirituality which radiates from Nazareth. This great explorer hastily abandoned his military career, attracted by the mystery of the Holy Family, the mystery of Jesus’ daily relationship with parents and neighbors, his labor, his humble prayer.

“Contemplating the Nazareth family, Brother Charles realized how empty the desire for power and wealth really is.”

Mother Teresa, another ‘modern’ saint and role-model also celebrated Nazareth spirituality. “I believe we must look for holiness, joy, and love in our own homes,” she said. “We must make our homes like a second ‘Nazareth’ where Jesus can come and live with us. Holiness is not a luxury, meant for only a few. It is a simple duty for each one of us.”

 

Pope  Paul VI visited Nazareth in 1964, the first pope since Saint Peter travel to Nazareth, in order to draw attention of the modern world to the Nazareth spirituality , which he called the “school of the Gospel” in which we can study the life of Jesus.

“Here one learns to observe, to listen, to meditate, to penetrate into the profound and mysterious meaning of that simple, humble, lovely apparition of God among men.”

“Here one learns almost imperceptibly to imitate him.”

Pope Paul said we learn three lessons in Nazareth: Silence, family life, and the dignity and value of labor.

Most importantly we learn love, he said. “Christ in his gospel has spelled out for the world the supreme motive and the noblest driving force for action and hence for liberty progress: Love.”

“No one can surpass it.

“Nor can anyone subdue or supplant it.

 “The only sound law of life is his gospel.

“The human person reaches his highest level in Christ’s teaching.

“Human society finds therein its most congenial and powerful unifying force.

“We believe, O Lord, in Thy Word, we will try to follow it and live it.”

 

 

 Silence

Silence is the first lesson of Nazareth, Pope Paul said in his Nazareth sermon: “May esteem for silence, that admirable and indispensable condition of mind revive in us, deafened as we are by so much noise, by so much tumult, by so many voices of frenzied modern life.”

“If only we could once again appreciate its great value.”

“The silence of Nazareth should teach us how to meditate in peace and quiet, to reflect on the deeply spiritual, and to be open to the voice of God’s inner wisdom and the counsel of true teachers.

“Nazareth can teach us the value of study and preparation, of meditation, of a well-ordered personal spiritual life, and of the silent prayer that is known only to God,” Pope Paul said.

 

Mother Teresa also emphasized the silence of contemplation: “It is very important, that union with God. You must be full of silence, for in the silence of the heart God speaks. An empty heart God fills…Silence of the heart, not only of the mouth, but the silence of the mind, silence of the eyes, silence of the touch,” she said. “Then you can hear him everywhere.”

In another context, she said: “The most important thing is silence. Souls of prayer are souls of deep silence. We cannot place ourselves directly in god’s presence without imposing upon ourselves interior silence. That is why we must accustom ourselves to stillness of the soul, of eyes, of the tongue.”

“God is the friend of silence. We need to find God, but we cannot find Him in noise, in excitement. See how nature, the trees, the flowers grow in deep silence. See how the sun, the stars, the moon move in silence….”

“We cannot put ourselves directly in the presence of God without the practice of internal and external silence..

“When you have listened to the voice of God in the stillness of your heart, then your heart is filled with God.

“The contemplative and ascetics of all ages and religious have sought God in the silence and solitude of the desert, forest, and mountains. Jesus himself spent forty days in the desert and the mountains, communing for long hours with the father in the silence of the night.

“We too are called to withdraw at intervals into deep silence and aloneness with God…to be alone with Him … to dwell lovingly in his presence, silent, empty, expectant, and motionless. We cannot find God in noise and agitation.” [Heart of the World, p. 93]

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 “When it is difficult to pray we must help ourselves to do so. The first means to use is silence, for souls of prayer are souls of great silence. We cannot put ourselves directly in the presence of God if we do not practice internal and external silence.”

“God is the friend of silence.”

“Let us adore Jesus in our hearts, who spent thirty years out of thirty-three in silence, who began his public life by spending forty days in silence, who often returned alone to spend the night alone on a mountain in silence. He who spoke with authority, now speaks his early life in silence. Let us adore Jesus in the Eucharistic silence.

“We need to find God and he cannot be found in restlessness and noise. See how nature, the trees, the flowers, the grass grow in perfect silence – see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they more in silence…The more we receive in silent prayer, the roe we can give in our active life….

“Jesus is always waiting in silence. In that silence he will listen to us, there he will speak to our soul, and there we will hear his voice. Interior silence is very difficult but we must make the effort. In silence we will find new energy and true unity.” [Life in The Spirit p. 20]

 

Family

“May Nazareth teach us what family life is, its communion of love, its austere and simple beauty, and its sacred and inviolable character,” Pope Paul said.

Mother Teresa said the family is the family is the cornerstone of civilization, all the troubles in the modern world arise from the suffering of the family unity. So many economic and social forces are destroying family life in the present age.

“Today there is so much trouble in the world and I think that much of it begins at home,” Mother Teresa said. “The world is suffering so much because there is no peace. There is no peace because there is no peace in the family and we have so many thousands and thousands of broken homes. We must make our homes centers of compassion and forgive endlessly and so bring peace.”
              “Make your house, your family, another Nazareth where love, peace, joy and unity reign, for love begins at home,” she said. “You must start there and make your home a center of burning love. You must be the hope of eternal happiness to your wife, your husband, your child, to your grandfather, grandmother; whoever is connected to you. Smile at each other.”

 

In meditation on the Holy Family of Nazareth, we learn the virtues of “tenderness” and consideration for one another, Mother Teresa said. “Thoughtfulness is the beginning of sanctity. If you learn this art of being thoughtful, you will become more and more Christ like, for he was always meek and he always thought of the needs of others,” she said. “Our life to be beautiful must be full of the thought of others. Jesus went about doing good”

“The thoughtfulness of Jesus and Mary and Joseph was so great that it made Nazareth the abode of the Most High God. If we also have that kind of thoughtfulness for each other, our homes would really become the abode of God most High.”

 

Charles de Foucald also taught the virtue of “tenderness” that he learned in the school of Nazareth.

“Have the tender care that expresses itself in little things that are like the balm for the heart,” he said. “With our neighbors, go into the smallest details, whether it is a question of health, of consolation, of prayerfulness, or of need.”

“Console and ease the pain of others through the tiniest attention,”

“Be tender and attentive towards those whom God puts in your path, as a brother towards a brother, as a mother towards a child.”

“As much as possible, be an element of consolation for those around us, as soothing balm, as our Lord was to those who drew near him.”

“Imitate Jesus as much as you can.”

 

 

Dignity of Labor

Pope Paul VI said, “Nazareth, house of the ‘Son of the Carpenter’, how we would like to understand and to praise here the law of labor, to restore the dignity of labor, to recall that work can not be an end in itself, and how free and elevated it becomes, beyond economic value, in proportion to the values which motivate it.”

Charles Peguy wrote a poem celebrating the holiness of labor of Nazareth:

Oh, that we might be able to look upon the man of Nazareth.

He, the carpenter, the woodworker in elm and birch,

And the man of the boat and Gennesaret,

And the stately path of his feet upon the waters.

Oh that we might be able

To see him again as he was on earth,

The man of wood of comeliness and the wood of birch.

And he carries himself, controlled in this humble misery,

Seated above the errant boat, riding along with the current.

 

“Let us stay with him in the humble house in Nazareth,” Charles de Foucald said, “people who live by exercising humble trade, poor and lowly people who live disregarded, obscure, hidden and prayerful in the solitude and seclusion, in silence, forgottenness and communion with God, that poverty helps us so much to obtain.”

 When he was planning his way of live for a new brotherly fraternity, he wrote, “Like Jesus of Nazareth, no particular dress, no enclosure, no dwelling far from all; habitation should be near a village like Jesus of Nazareth.”

“No less than eight hours of work a day, manual work or otherwise – like Jesus at Nazareth, no big estates or large houses, like Jesus of Nazareth….”

 “It is not necessary to teach others, to cure them, or to improve them: it is only necessary to live among them, sharing the human condition and being present to them in love,” he said.

The great German theologian Karl Rahner said Nazareth spirituality is the center of Christian life in the present age of the world: “Our relationship to God today must either be mediated perhaps more explicitly than ever before through our relationship to the concrete  Jesus of Nazareth, to his life and death and his relationship to his fellow men, or it will not exist at all….”