Given at the Walsingham Pilgrimage Mass at Westminster Cathedral on 11th September 2021
Today we come to the Holy House at Walsingham, clearly not able to travel but in heart, mind, and soul. We are summoned by the Holy Spirit in the same way that Richeldis de Faverches was called to come and build the Holy House in 1061. We unite our prayers with countless women and men who have trodden the pilgrim road to Walsingham over the centuries and the prayers of the monks of the former Augustine Priory founded in 1153. We come to Our Blessed Lady with our prayers and petitions.
Most of Jesus’ earthly life was lived in obscurity for thirty years in Nazareth, with Our Lady and, for some time, St. Joseph. There, under their protection and love, he grew in wisdom through hearing the Hebrew scriptures, celebrating the Jewish feasts with their rhythm of prayer, travelled to the great festivals in Jerusalem, worked as a carpenter and knew the intimacy and good of family life. Nazareth was an obscure village in Galilee, as Nathaniel said, ‘can anything good come out of Nazareth?’ (John 1:46) Today we are invited to reflect on the mystery of the hidden life of Jesus in Nazareth in the holy house where the Holy Spirit was at work. The child Jesus and then the young man, through his prayer and family life, came to understand the message of God’s kingdom to be proclaimed in the light of the prophets.
In the words of the opening hymn, we sung of Jesus’ love for Mary that led to growth in his love for all people,
Sing of Jesus, sing of Mary,
In the name of Nazareth,
Toil and labour cannot weary
Love ending unto death.
Constant was the love he gave her,
Though it drove him from her side,
Forth to preach, and heal, and suffer
Till on Calvary he died.
Nazareth was the school of love. We can only love everyone, when we can love someone – ‘constant was the love he gave her, though it drove him from her side’.
St Pope Paul VI delivered a beautiful address on the meaning of Nazareth in 1964. It is read in the breviary every year on the Feast of the Holy Family. He writes, ‘The home of Nazareth is the school where we begin to understand the life of Jesus - the school of the Gospel.’ By watching the home of Nazareth, we look, listen, meditate, and penetrate the meaning of Jesus’ life in Nazareth close to Our Blessed Lady and protected by St Joseph. From Nazareth, we learn the importance of a spiritual rule of life to follow the teaching of the gospel and become a disciple of Christ. We do this because Jesus learnt his first understanding of love at the breast of his mother, in her arms and from her tender care. The more we allow ourselves to be penetrated by these simple family mysteries, the more we grasp the beautiful manifestation of the Son of God and glimpse the meaning of the incarnation; ‘The virgin will conceive and give birth to a Son and they will call him Emmanuel, a name which means “God-is-with-us”’. Like children watching others around them, by watching Jesus we begin to learn how to imitate him and become holy.
St Paul VI tells us that the first lesson of Nazareth is silence. In silence we ponder the mysteries of the holy house to reflect and meditate upon the love that God reveals through the Holy Family. We are invited to cultivate that silence in our lives, a desire for which drove Jesus to rise early and go and pray. The second lesson is the holiness of family life because God-made-flesh touched and shared in family life. We pray that families may be enriched by their prayer and love and especially for families which are struggling. The third lesson of Nazareth is the lesson of work. Jesus lived the world of work and made it holy. It is through our work that people seek to build up their families but also contribute to the good of society. In Nazareth we see the dignity of work of which Saint John Paul II wrote so beautifully. He tells us that work is not merely a matter of earning money, however much or little that might be, but rather that human work must give priority to the dignity of men and women who contribute through their gifts to the good of other people and the whole of our society. This might be summed up in his reflections on the work of those people who have a disability. They are ‘full-scale subjects of work, useful, respected for their human dignity and called to contribute to the progress and welfare of their families and of the community according to their particular capacities.’ (Laborem Exercens 22)
After his conversion, Blessed Charles de Foucauld (named a saint but not yet canonised) was driven by the Holy Spirit to live in Nazareth. There he wanted to learn about the hidden life of Jesus and to imitate him. He learns that in Nazareth Jesus learnt to adore God, to contemplate him, to declare his love and praise for him. He learnt the importance of thanksgiving as he walked around the fields and saw God’s mysteries at work in the plants, the seeds and the life of farmers and shepherds. He learnt the meaning of the words ‘Ask and you will receive’ and to petition God for the needs of the world.
In his cell at Nazareth, St Charles learnt the closeness of Jesus present in the Blessed Sacrament. The tabernacle is the truly Holy House. He reminds us that, ‘The life of Nazareth can be followed anywhere; follow it in the place where it is most helpful to your neighbours.’ Nazareth is the place where most people lead their lives, often quietly in obscurity and often in suffering; it is the place of the hidden life, of daily family life, of prayer, of work, of obscurity. For Jesus, it was also a place of love and familiarity. It is a model for family life built on the Holy Family. Just as Jesus in Nazareth makes the ordinary pattern of family life holy, we are called to make our homes holy places.
Bishop John Sherrington