Little Brothers and Sisters
of the Eucharist Handbook
Nazareth the Ordinary and Hidden Life
Jesus’
hidden life at Nazareth
became the model and teaching upon which Brother Charles based his own
life. It was Jesus’ hidden life at Nazareth
that he contemplated with special attraction, and so it was the simplicity of
Nazareth that
inspired him and that he wanted to reproduce in his own life.
Brother
Charles realized that Jesus’ life was ordinary and hidden in the sense
that he was the son of an ordinary carpenter in a village as any son of a
local family, with cousins, and uncles and aunts, there was the life of
the community, its feasts and fasts, its synagogue life, the sowing, the harvesting,
the births and deaths. This was a vital community and Jesus was in
it. In it for thirty years. He did not preach. He lived His
message: ”Cry the Gospel with your Life”. The holiness of
the ordinary.
It
was this spirituality of Nazareth
which gave life and breath to
Brother Charles’ vocation. He did not desire to live a religious life separated from the world
but a contemplative life in the midst of the world — in the marketplace
of the dally and ordinary. Because of this — his spirituality can
be embraced by all — no matter what one’s vocation in life. A
spirituality of Nazareth
is at the heart of our universal vocation as Christians.
Jesus’
life at Nazareth invites us to respond to our Christian calling within the surrounding
in which we find ourselves, within our families, our neighborhood, our
parish, our schools and places of work. It teaches us that every aspect
of our lives, however ordinary and humdrum, can be made holy.