Archbishop Dolan's Thought for the Week

January 8, 2008

Dear Friends United in Love and Service of Jesus Christ and His Church:

Last Sunday, the Feast of the Epiphany, we beheld Him as a baby in the crib worshipped by the Wise Men.

Next Sunday, the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, we’ll see Him as a thirty-year-old.

My, oh my! Where did the time go?

How did He grow up so fast?

What did He do for thirty years?

We don’t really know, do we? All we know is that His life was plain, simple, routine, hidden.  He lived at Nazareth and grew up under Mary and Joseph.

We call it the Hidden Life.

And that is profound. In spending 90% of His early life hidden, He teaches us a lot:

-- the value of silence. Except for His cryptic remark to Mary when He was twelve -- “Did you not know I have to be about my Father’s business” -- when she found Him in the temple, He speaks not a word;

-- the significance of family life, as He grows up in a home, loved and formed by faithful parents;

-- the gift of work, as He was known as “the carpenter’s son”;

-- the necessity of preparation, as He spent three decades getting ready for His three years of public ministry.

-- the value of religion, as He was raised a faithful, devout, observant, practicing Jew.

He gave it all value -- home, family, parents, faith, friends, neighbors, labor, education, silence, prayer, humility, simplicity -- in His Hidden Life.

Do you think your life is tedious, fatiguing, boring, desperate, uneventful, humdrum, and monotonous?

You’ve got good company . . . the company of the One who spent thirty years of Hidden Life in Nazareth.

Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan

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