On Tuesday, His Grace turns to the theme of Jesus’ hidden years.
His Grace asks the students to consider questions concerning what really happened:
‘Who, for instance, was Joseph? Was he indeed a carpenter, or has Joseph’s true role in the society in which he lived been misconstrued and forgotten to us? Though it be a beautiful, simplifying image to grasp, which offers to us much that is of value in Catholic faith…
‘A wise elder, which carpenter could mean, or a great engineer, an architekton, which in the Greek does not mean carpenter. But carpenter in the Hebrew could mean a wise man…’
His Grace turns the pages of his Bible back and forth, as if to itemize the paucity of information. Then he says:
‘What I think I can say to you with confidence is that it is of profound significance that we simply don’t know what Jesus was doing for most of his earthly life. There are some very different possibilities. One idea cherished by the Church is that Jesus worked with his father Joseph as a carpenter. Another possibility is that Jesus lived and prayed and studied closely with John the Baptist. They were cousins, and very close, almost the same, in age. Luke’s Gospel tells us clearly that Jesus and John knew each other from within the womb before they were born. So there may have been something quite important happening there. You see, we don’t know – it is an impossible mystery to us – just how much Jesus had to learn. This is because, if Jesus knew everything, humanly speaking, even as a tiny baby, then how can we say he is fully human? We simply can’t probe too far into this mystery, but we can draw extraordinary truth and healing from this thought, which becomes of immense relevance in our own lives. Jesus came to know and to understand himself not merely as a son of God, but as God the Son, and so as self-identical with his Father. It is not an adoptive relationship. Jesus is God. Now so much is hidden here. But this is a great gift. If you think about it, how do we come to know that we are loved by God, that we have our relationship with God? What are we born with in here’ – his chest – ‘and what do we have to learn? This is to say, what is gifted to us by other Christians at our baptism?
‘Jesus must have studied, and experienced profound revelation about who and what he truly was, and, so it seems to be, these studies cannot have been confined to the Semitic world. But this is the important point: there is a hiddenness about all of this. No matter which schools and which sects our Lord might have encountered all these years, this to us is as a desert space. What this means is that we can enter into the hidden life of Jesus, and there we can discover our own being with God, our own sonship. Our own particular being loved by God can come to us, if we can enter within this great unknown – into this desert space, where we are loved by Jesus. I firmly believe that there may be a great Lenten mystery in this period of our Lord’s life.’
We are called by Jesus to acknowledge our Christianity to others, not to be afraid of physical threats or of other discomforts. In our own time, this encompasses a broad range of Christian experience, ranging from real physical, and mortal, danger at the hands of fanatical extremists of other faiths, to, in more civilized territories, the snide denigration of Christian faith by anti-theists, and such social embarrassment as might follow from this [ … ]
The poem explores the spiritual journey of the poet, George Herbert, reflecting Herbert’s initial enthusiasm for the religious life and his later struggles with faith, disappointment, and suffering. The poem opens by recalling the poet’s early attraction to divine service, which he finds ‘brave’ and full of joy. He describes an idealized experience of religious devotion, where he expected to receive numerous blessings, both from his natural pleasures and the added benefits of God’s grace. At this stage, the poet sees everything in a positive light, imagining that both heaven and earth will provide him with endless happiness [ … ]
Saint Raphael the Archangel is one of the three named angels in the Bible, alongside Gabriel and Michael. Saint Raphael is a significant figure in Judeo-Christian tradition, recognized for his role as a healer and protector. In the Book of Tobit, an ancient Jewish text, Saint Raphael is portrayed as a guide and companion to the protagonist Tobit, helping him overcome various challenges and ultimately bringing about his healing [ … ]
