Nazareth

"And his father and mother marveled at what was said about him" (LK. 2:33)

Being a Religious Studies student, I have had to listen to a lot of what St. Paul would call "garbage," from my professors and peers, regarding the person, nature, and history of Jesus Christ. The long and the thick of it is that Jesus was as much of an idiot as his Apostles were, and as a puerile man had neither a sense of identity nor of self awareness to such an extent that he never knew who or what he was until his very last day in the garden of Gethsemane--watch Martin "the faithful Catholic" Scorsese's Last Temptation of Christ for an excellent depiction of this thought. As I sit here, though, I am not sure about what I should be more annoyed with: the lack of exegetical honesty in academia, or the fact that most of these academics (and I use that term loosely) received their Religious Studies degree from Universal Pictures.

Besides the above quote, there are several passages from the Gospel of Luke alone that discredit such an hypothesis. For instance, look at the Annunciation. How often do we see an Angel: 3 or 4 times a year, or if you're pious enough, what, 5 or 6 times? Not likely. In fact I'm willing to assume that for even the Blessed Virgin Mary it was a rare event, at best. Let's look at Jesus' cousin, John the Baptist, whose parents were so old, in fact, that I think it's safe to assume that having a child for an "old man" and a woman who was "advanced in years" (LK. 1:18) was completely out of the question. Lastly, Joseph, Jesus' dad, was absolutely distraught at the thought of a pregnant Mary. So, for him to see an Angel in a dream, in such a way as to convince him to "do as the Angel of the Lord commanded" (Mt. 1:24), is a pretty big thing. In fact, all of these events are very big events--and this doesn't even include the aching of Israel for a Saviour and the detailed knowledge of the messianic scriptures which was common to Jews like Zechariah, Elizabeth, Mary, and Joseph.

Let's ask ourselves: how would we respond to such awe-inspiring events? Would we, like many banal academics, think of such events as so hum-drum that we wouldn't share such great experiences with our children--especially if one of them happens to be revealed as the promised messiah? I sure wouldn't, I would tell him. I would make sure, too, that I do everything in my power to raise this child the best way I know how, knowing that the fate of humanity--of every person that ever existed and ever will exist--is sitting across from me, slurping his soup. Why shouldn't I? I mean, we tell our kids of the many hours we've spent in anticipation of their birth; we tell them what that birth was like and how "daddy passed out at the sight of all that blood"; we tell them of the times when they peed--or worse--all over mommy's couch; and we tell them how adorable--or annoying--they were as they slurped their soup. So it seems only human, only natural for us to assume, with certainty, that not only Mary and Joseph, but Elizabeth and Zechariah too, told Jesus of the events surrounding and foretelling his birth. That is, of course, if our impression of the Holy Family isn't derived from melancholic holy cards, and, therefore, void of humanity.

I know that some will still attest that we can never know how Jesus' family dealt with such extraordinary events. But I think that some academics who, in true hermeneutical fashion, remove the humanity and the subjective from the realm of Nazareth, miss the boat. They fail to interpret the life of Jesus as both fully human and fully divine. Now, I don't mean to pick on the Religious Studies people. I happen to be very grateful for my Religious Studies degree, and I think that it will compliment my pursuit of a Master's in Theology quite nicely. What the Religious Studies academic intends to do is to objectively examine a religion from an outside perspective, without the lens of faith as a guide. I think that such study is important for a complete understanding of what it means to be "catholic" or "religious"--even "religulous" for that matter-- but being objective doesn't license one to be skeptic, which is precisely what some of these academics are guilty of: being skeptically analytical in their approach to Christianity. As skeptical analysts, these academics are intellectually dishonest and borderline ignoble. Now that I've digressed, let's get back to the topic at hand: Nazareth.

Catherine Doherty described Nazareth as a purgative place in which Jesus was formed into his mission as Redeemer. Nazareth, then, is used to not only describe the place in which Jesus grew up, but as a state of formation as well. Nazareth was a place where the Word made flesh pitched his tent in the midst of his people, and it was also where he received impeccable spiritual and intellectual formation. It was there that he learned how to think, speak, and act like a 1st century Jew. Therefore, when his mother, father, aunt, uncle, and cousin shared with him all of the extraordinary circumstances surrounding his birth, Jesus the Israelite knew what they meant, and Jesus the Redeemer knew what he came here to do: free us from the captivity of sin.