9. TEACHING OF THE SCHOOL OF NAZARETH

The family is the cradle of love and life, and for this very reason it is the primordial place of education: to educate is in fact to teach how to live and how to love. Now Nazareth, a model of family because it was chosen by God for the Incarnation of the Son, is also a model of education, whose ideal is to develop the life of sons and daughters of God inaugurated on the day of Baptism.

The education of children and the maturation of parents

In Nazareth, Jesus, the Son of God, was educated, who in obedience to Joseph and Mary learned as a man to obey God's will, the ideal of every educational journey. Penetrating here are the words of Pope Benedict: “In the life spent in Nazareth, Jesus honored the Virgin Mary and the righteous Joseph, remaining submissive to their authority throughout his childhood and adolescence. In this way he highlighted the primary value of the family in the education of the person... This reveals the most authentic and profound vocation of the family: namely, that of accompanying each of its members on the path of discovery of God and of the plan he has laid out for them.”

In Nazareth, there is Mary, our mother in the order of grace for three very good reasons: first of all, because she is the one who educated Jesus, which is already giddy; then because, at a deeper level, by Jesus she was educated by becoming the perfect disciple; and finally because given the educational excellence of the Mother, Jesus gave her to us as mother and teacher in the faith. There is between the Mother and the Son a marvelous reciprocity: “in the deepest discretion,” explains A. von Speyr, “an exchange of mutual dedication is created between them, within which the Son is nourished by the pure life of the Mother, a life which she has received from God... She shows him how man behaves with his fellow men, makes him see, through her personal example, what love of neighbor is in everyday activity”. And on the other hand - observes Card. Colombo - “for Mary, too, there was a strenuous journey of faith, which would make her conquer, with ever clearer awareness, the mystery hidden in that Son of hers, and gradually make her understand that she would have to detach herself from Him as the son of her only possession, in order to receive Him, at the foot of the Cross, as a saving gift, destined by God for the benefit of all humanity.” The Son of God matures in his humanity thanks to Mary, and Mary matures in her motherhood thanks to Jesus!

And there is Joseph, who edified by the holiness of his bride, is raised to a perfect marriage, where love for God and love for his bride become one. Just as Jesus is the will of God himself (he is the Holy One!), and just as Mary does not distinguish between God's expectations and her own expectations (she is the Immaculate Conception!), so Joseph learns in Nazareth to make God's will his own will: “at first,” von Speyr observes, “being subject to the law of original sin, he cannot consider anything but the opposition between the marriage state and virginity.” But then, since his engagement to Mary, who is a woman, a virgin and completely open to God, he experiences at the same time and integrally the authentic love of a woman, the fall of every disordered desire, the joy of total service to God: in the end “his love for Mary is love in God, full and human. It will be a renunciation for him when he has to withdraw before the prodigy of the Holy Spirit. A renunciation and not a disappointment.”

Education as a family fact

On closer inspection, the first educational legacy to be handed over to children is the family itself, family love, family structure, and the related virtues: the ability to honor, obey, give thanks, forgive and care for loved ones, become and be free in bonds. At a time when the ideal of autonomy and the banner of individual rights have undermined marriage and the family, producing spiritual and material devastation, it must be forcefully reaffirmed - as Pope Francis says - that “the family remains the foundation of coexistence and the guarantee against social breakdown,” because “children have the right to grow up in a family, with a father and a mother, capable of creating an environment suitable for their development and affective maturation.” In this sense, Nazareth is the permanent reminder -- in the authoritative words of Paul VI -- “of the sacred and inviolable character of the family,” “of the gentleness and irreplaceability of family education,” “of its natural function in the social order.”

Let us delve a little deeper. In Nazareth comes into full light one of the educational truths that is not a little obscured today. It is the fact that family education cannot be reduced to care without being witness, nor can it be reduced to information without being formation. In this sense, parents educate as parents, extending the gift of life by witnessing to the truth of life and accompanying in a good life. Instead, they do not educate as teachers or instructors. What makes family education irreducible to hygiene, nutrition and education is that its goal is wisdom of life, not anything less. In other words, in family education it is not explanations but understanding that is in the foreground, not the surface of life but the depths of life, not what is all in all self-evident but what is mysterious.

“If it is true that the basic codes of love and family upbringing are the authority of parents and the filial obedience of children, it is because - as we learn in the best way in the comparison with the family of Nazareth - the mystery of life, which has its source and destiny in eternal life, precedes and exceeds us! while submitting to the limits of others, to the limits of my husband, my father, my wife, to their pace.” One can grow in wisdom even in submission to not understanding and not being understood. Understanding is basically compared to the cares, gestures and words that precede us, surround us and make us grow in family!

Particularly, Joseph is an encouraging model for all parents, because he educates them to welcome with confidence all the surprises and shadows of life. Father Amorth, in one of his writings on Mary, asks: “why did God allow so much time of excruciating pain for both holy spouses, so loved and beloved by him?” He responds very wisely, “I believe it is the same reasons why the Father asked the Son for the sacrifice of the Cross. God's ways are not our ways. The Lord asks us to do his will, he does not ask us to understand his deep motives, which are often beyond our earthly faculties... Often the path of our life follows a course entirely different from our predictions. Joseph is a great model of willingness for us. The Lord does not have to give us explanations for his behavior: he seeks those who do his will, even if he often does not tell us or make us understand the reason why.” It is necessary to trust God, rely on Him and trust in everything, whether happy or sad. Explanations will not be lacking, but they will come later, or perhaps only in heaven.

Also because, if God on his part is able to turn everything to good, indecisive is our response, our correspondence, more or less timid, more or less decisive, to his will and grace, and indecisive is our willingness to say no to the world, to its seductions, to its threats. Above all, it is to be seen how docile we are in small things to God's will, for “if one is faithful in the little, much is given and entrusted to him” (Lk. 16:10). Herein lies perhaps the thing that is most learned in Nazareth's family upbringing: in his stay in Nazareth, Father Amorth again observes, “the main fact about which I think the Son of God wanted to instruct us is that holiness does not lie in great works, but in living righteously day by day,” without too many regrets of the past and without too much anxiety and pretension to know the future.

Roberto Carelli SDB