The Hidden years of Christ
Friends in Christ, it has been said that God could have saved us by doing some spectacular, shocking miracle for the world – like filling the sky with fire and booming out his voice for days and days, speaking to us, and even declaring us saved – or doing that every week for us to never doubt his power and authority. But he didn’t do that.
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At an enormous risk, the Son of God decided instead to quietly join himself to our humanity – to take on our own human condition and live our life and die our death – perfect solidarity with his creatures, with his beloved children.
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But the risk of this way, is that familiarity would breed contempt – that the respect due to Our Lord would not be given, because – how can a God do the things that we do? Human things?
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Today in the gopsel, Jesus returns to Nazareth where he grew up; by now he has disciples; it is said that he had worked miracles; but – Jesus seemed just TOO human to the people of his town. They had seen him grow up there. ‘Isn’t this the carpenter, Mary’s son?, they asked sarcastically.
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Now because they said this, it surely meant that Joseph had already died. No doubt, for years, Jesus had continued the carpentry work of St. Joseph, so he himself was known as ‘the carpenter.’ So without Joseph, this is why he was called ‘Mary’s son.’
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Our translation refers to Jesus’ brothers and sisters, but this simply means cousins or relatives, because they used the same word for all these things.
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The Son of God chose, for 33 years of his life, not to do miracles or even preach or teach or heal anyone – he chose to live an ordinary life as a workman, a carpenter. Jesus lived as a working man, a person like us. He wanted to experience full, ordinary, human life.
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You know, Alexander the Great, after he had conquered Darius and subdued Persia, he wished to gain the affection of the people; so he went around dressed up in the Persian style of clothing. Well – God has acted in the same way. In order to show us how much he loves us, God the Son chose to not only clothe himself in our human nature, but to spend most of his life as a common workman, living among his dearest creatures.
