Cathal BarryThe hidden life at Nazareth allows everyone to enter into fellowship with Jesus, writes Cathal Barry
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 labour. His religious life was that of a Jew obedient to the law of God, a life in the community. From this whole period, it is revealed to us that Jesus was ìobedientî to his parents and that he ìincreased in wisdom and in stature, and in favour with God and manî (Lk 2:51-52).
Jesusí obedience to his mother and legal father fulfils the fourth commandment perfectly and, according to the Church, was the temporal image of his filial obedience to his Father in heaven. The Church teaches that everyday obedience of Jesus to Joseph and Mary both announced and anticipated the obedience of Holy Thursday: "Not my will…" (Lk 22:42). It also holds that the 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.
The hidden life at Nazareth allows everyone to enter into fellowship with Jesus by the most ordinary events of daily life.
The finding of Jesus in the temple is the only event that breaks the silence of the Gospels about the hidden years of Jesus. 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?" (Lk 2:49). Mary and Joseph did not understand these words, but they accepted them in faith. Mary ìkept all these things in her heartî during the years Jesus remained hidden in the silence of an ordinary life.
Public life
Jesus' public life begins with his baptism by John in the Jordan.
The Church teaches that the baptism of Jesus is on his part the acceptance and inauguration of his mission as Godís suffering Servant. At his baptism, according to Scriptures, "the heavens were opened" (Mt 3:16) ñ the heavens that Adam's sin had closed ñ and the waters were sanctified by the descent of the Spirit, a prelude to the new creation.
Through Baptism, according to Church tutelage, the Christian is sacramentally assimilated to Jesus, who in his own baptism anticipates his death and resurrection. The Christian must enter into this mystery of humility and repentance, go down into the water with Jesus in order to rise with him, be reborn of water and the Spirit so as to become the Father's beloved son in the Son and ìwalk in newness of life" (Rom 6:4).
As St Gregory of Nazianzus put it: "Let us be buried with Christ by Baptism to rise with him; let us go down with him to be raised with him; and let us rise with him to be glorified with him."
And St Hilary of Poitiers: "Everything that happened to Christ lets us know that, after the bath of water, the Holy Spirit swoops down upon us from high heaven and that, adopted by the Fatherís voice, we become sons of God."