If I were to name the place in the Holy Land most special to Salesian spirituality, I would name, “Nazareth.” I am sure that “Jerusalem” would have come immediately to mind for most readers. Surely, Calvary is the place most sacred in the redeeming death of Jesus, and the tomb in Jerusalem is the holy ground from which Jesus rose in glorious triumph on Easter Sunday. St. Francis de Sales would agree with all of that.
Still, we often tend to forget or downplay the redemptive value of the thirty years that Jesus spent in Nazareth learning about God from his parents and apprenticing the carpenter’s trade from St. Joseph. Those “hidden” years are especially sacred to de Sales for they speak to the “ordinary” that is at the heart of Salesian spirituality.
For de Sales, those thirty hidden years are just as significant for redemption as the ministry, passion, death and resurrection of Jesus. Most people spend most of their lives in the ordinary and give and take of daily interactions with family, friends, classmates and colleagues. Doing and embracing God’s will is the only essential thing for Francis, just as it was for Jesus: “I have come to do the will of the One who sent me.” And the principal arena for God’s will is one’s state in life and all the ordinary and often-little things that come with living, working and interacting with others day in and day out. Indeed, “Doing ordinary things with great love” is the secret to holiness for the Salesian family. This is what Nazareth teaches us.
For thirty years, Jesus lived with his mother and foster father, interacting with them and with his relatives and neighbors in hundreds of ordinary ways every day. He had ample opportunity to learn and practice the “little virtues” so celebrated by Francis: kindness, compassion, forgiveness and charity.
The parents of Jesus were his first and best teachers of the ways of God and the expectations of love’s double commandment. Mary also taught him a continual availability –her “fiat!-- to the divine will: “Let it be done to me according to your word!” In his quiet and gentle manner, Joseph taught him to be open and responsive to the promptings of the Holy Spirit as Joseph himself was in taking Mary for his wife and in fleeing to Egypt at his son’s birth. He also taught his son the carpenter’s trade, teaching him by example how to work with his hands and, thus, to esteem and respect all those who, like him, earned their livelihood by hard work and the sweat of their brow.
We celebrate the feast of St. Joseph this week. Jesus learned much from that large-hearted man of great faith, gentle strength and hard work. May we learn from him as well! Esteem your own “Nazareth,” for therein lies the secret to holiness!
By Rev. Lewis S. Fiorelli, OSFS
Provincial
Oblates of St. Francis de Sales
DeSales Weekly: https://oblates.squarespace.com/desales-weekly
DeSales Weekly Editor: Rev. John (Jack) Kolodziej, OSFS
