Today's meditation: The example of Nazareth

The house of Nazareth is the school where we began to understand the life of Jesus, that is, the school of the Gospel. Here one learns to observe, to listen, to meditate, to penetrate the so profound and so mysterious meaning of this manifestation of the Son of God so simple, humble and beautiful. Perhaps we also learn, almost without realizing it, to imitate.
Here we learn the method that will allow us to know who Christ is. Here we discover the need to observe the picture of his stay among us: that is, the places, times, customs, language, sacred rites, in short, all that Jesus used to manifest himself in the world.
Here everything has a voice, everything has a meaning. Here, at this school, we certainly understand why we must keep a spiritual discipline if we want to follow the doctrine of the Gospel and become disciples of the Christ. Oh! how willingly we would like to go back to childhood and go to this humble and sublime school in Nazareth! How ardently we would like to begin again, close to Mary, to learn the true science of life and the superior wisdom of the divine truths! But we are only passing through and we need to lay down the desire to continue to know, in this house, the never completed formation to the intelligence of the Gospel. However, we will not leave this place without having collected, almost surreptitiously, some short warnings from the house of Nazareth.
In the first place it teaches us silence. Oh! if the esteem of silence was reborn in us, an admirable and indispensable atmosphere of the spirit: while we are stunned by so many din, noises and sensational voices in the agitated and tumultuous life of our time. Oh! silence of Nazareth, teach us to be firm in good thoughts, intent on inner life, ready to hear well the secret inspirations of God and the exhortations of true teachers. Teach us how important and necessary the preparation work, the study, the meditation, the interiority of life, the prayer, which God alone sees in secret.
Here we understand the way of family life. Nazareth reminds us what the family is, what the communion of love is, its austere and simple beauty, its sacred and inviolable character; show us how sweet and irreplaceable family education is, teach us its natural function in the social order. Finally we learn the lesson of the work. Oh! home of Nazareth, home of the carpenter's son! Here above all we wish to understand and celebrate the law, severe certainly, but redeeming human fatigue; here dignify the dignity of work so that it is felt by everyone; to remember under this roof that work cannot be an end in itself, but that it receives its freedom and excellence, not only from what is called economic value, but also from what turns it to its noble end; here finally we want to greet the workers of the whole world and show them the great model, their divine brother, the prophet of all the just causes that concern them, that is Christ our Lord.