8. NAZARETH, SCHOOL OF PRAYER
In an Angelus on the feast dedicated to the Holy Family, Pope Benedict XVI said that “the house of Nazareth is a school of prayer, where one learns to listen, to meditate, to penetrate the profound meaning of the manifestation of the Son of God by taking Mary as an example”. Indeed, on closer inspection, the greatest contemplatives in history lived in Nazareth. Jesus contemplated from eternity the face of the merciful Father, and in time was Himself the ‘face of Mercy’; Mary, contemplated not only with the eyes of her soul, but also with the eyes of her flesh - a mother's eyes! - the face of Mercy; and Joseph, in caring for the Child and the Mother, contemplated the first nucleus of the Church, the Church in its radical holiness, that is, the perfect encounter between the full dedication of God (Jesus) and the full acceptance of human person (Mary).
If to be contemplative is to recognise the presence of the mystery of God, then Mary and Joseph were truly privileged, because in Jesus, they welcomed and recognised Emmanuel, God-with-us. And they recognised him precisely, with all purity, because “Mary,” says von Speyr, “who does not know original sin, and Joseph, who is detached from it, represent the field of relations in which the Son grows” and within which the Son prepares his manifestation to the world. However, this mind-boggling privilege does not distance them irretrievably from us, but makes them close and available to us, not only with the attractiveness of their example, but also with the power of their intercession: only men and women of prayer generate others to prayer, and only those who dwell in the Lord's house can help others enter them. Mary, in particular, is also a teacher of prayer because she is assumed into heaven in body and soul, and contemplates the splendour of her Son at the right hand of the Father.
The Mother's prayer
These things are dizzying, but Mary was contemplative with her whole self, even with her body: it was in her body that she perceived God's presence as He took up His abode among us, and the Son took up His abode in the world in Her! It is a mystery that will never cease to arouse holy amazement and drive us to prayer: “Mary,” Enzo Bianchi says well, “was space, the place where He who dwells in every space and who can be contained by nothing. Mary is the visible site of the invisible God, the site where God, who is Spirit, took flesh, where the immortal became mortal, where the eternal became temporal. From the bosom of the Father, the Son came among us in the bosom of Mary; the Word of God, which was in the beginning with God, became flesh in Mary and in her became audible word, visible presence for us men”. It means that we can contemplate, thanks to her contemplation.We can experience God, thanks to her experience of God. In this, Mary is not only Mediatrix of graces, but Mediatrix of Grace!
Prayer and life
When we speak of prayer, the risk is to make it appear as something other than life, a parenthesis of life. In reality, when we reflect ourselves in the experience of Mary and Joseph, and also in the experience of Jesus Himself in the time of his childhood and domestic life and in the mystery of his adolescence and youth, we are taught that prayer is the depth of life, the relationship that keeps us alive and gives meaning to life, the experience that illuminates every other experience.
Just as Mary and Joseph did not have to go away from home and work to meet Jesus, because Jesus was at home, so authentic prayer does not turn away from life, but is the light of life, the strength for life's journey. To meet Jesus in prayer is to foretaste something of heaven on earth and of earth oriented towards heaven; to pray is to experience the extraordinary in the ordinary, the festive that transfigures the ordinary, the pause along the way to rediscover the essential in the folds of the days, the recollection of the fragments of life that induce agitation, dispersion and despair, to rediscover trust and consolation, and to realise with amazement that God knows how to write straight even on crooked lines, because ‘everything contributes to the good of those who love God’ (Rom 8:28).
Jesus invites us to ‘pray always, without tiring’ (Lk 18:1), because He is the first to pray always. He Himself is the living prayer, in heaven with the Father, and in Nazareth with Mary and Joseph. In this sense, ‘being prayer’ and not just ‘saying prayers’ is vital, because, as we see in Nazareth, where Jesus matured his mission as Redeemer in thirty years of concealment, great works are born from silence, and before being managed they must be managed, in the enchantment and modesty of an inspiration, in the docility and prudence of discernment, in the courage of delivery and decision, in the humility of a heart entrusted, in the joy of doing the Father's will in all things.
Of course, this silence and recollection cannot be improvised; on the contrary, it is constantly threatened. It is an atmosphere that must be guarded, an inner discipline that must be educated from the early age. With the fatigue we often have in praying, 'distracted from distraction by distraction' (a phrase from Eliot, a British poet), we would then like to return as children to Nazareth to learn to pray from Jesus, Mary, Joseph, attracted by their example. Unforgettable are the words of Paul VI on the Holy Family as a school of prayer: Nazareth “teaches us silence. Oh! would that there were reborn in us an appreciation of silence, an admirable and indispensable atmosphere of the spirit: while we are stunned by so many noises and clamorous voices in the exalted and tumultuous life of our time. O Silence of Nazareth, teach us to be firm in good thoughts, intent on the inner life, ready to hear God's secret inspirations and the exhortations of the true teachers. Teach us how important and necessary are the work of preparation, study, meditation, the interiority of life, and prayer, which God alone sees in secret”.
Praying in the family
Praying in the family is vital, because without prayer there is no love, while, as the Pope teaches, “the family that prays remains united” (AL 227). There may be too much or too little love, but there is hardly any love as God intends. Card. Colombo, in a splendid meditation on the Holy Family, observed that the modern family, living in a secularistic and individualistic cultural atmosphere, needs to mirror the family of Nazareth at least in these two aspects: “in the holy fear of God, and in holy mutual love”.
The holy fear of God refers to what is essential in prayer: disposing oneself to do God's will in everything, in ordinary acts (in Nazareth it was the meals and fasts, the liturgies in the synagogue and the pilgrimages to Jerusalem) as well as in extraordinary events (in Nazareth it was the census, the flight, the exile, the finding of Jesus), in moments of joy and in those of sacrifice. In Nazareth, all this took place in the presence of Jesus: Joseph contemplated the silent understanding of Mother and Son, and Mary, “for her part, kept all the things of Jesus in her heart” (Lk 2:19), thus becoming the intimate memory of the Church.
Hence the second thing, the fact that prayer grows holy mutual love, which requires forgetfulness of self and care for the other: “in the house of Nazareth each person lived for the others forgetting oneself". St. Joseph worked to support Jesus and Mary: he toiled and suffered to keep the Son of God and his Mother's virginity safe... Mary lived only for Jesus and her chaste husband. Her thoughts, her deeds, her work, her day was for them... And Jesus seems to forget that he is the Creator and subjects Himself to his creatures; attentive to their nods, solicitous in all things, careful to anticipate their desires”. Prayer, in this sense, is always a work of de-centralisation from self and recollection in God, the best cure against the narcissism that extinguishes souls, the first source of works for the salvation of souls!
Roberto Carelli SDB
