Did you ever stop to think about the kind of wild fact that 30 of the 33 years Jesus spent on this earth were “hidden” in the heart of his home, while just 3 were spent in public ministry?
During his “hidden” years, Our Lord worked, prayed, and took part in community life as a son, neighbor, citizen, and friend. But what were these years like? And what can we learn from them?
We can see from his words in the Bible that his carpentry work must have been a big part of his life. He deeply understood the world of work, especially in the fields of carpentry and construction: “A number of Jesus’ parables take place at construction sites. How much of Jesus’ personal experience might be reflected in these parables?”
As a carpenter, Jesus worked hard, with care and precision. Pope Francis described Jesus “learning the carpenter’s craft from St Joseph in his workshop in Nazareth, sharing with him the commitment, effort, satisfaction and also the difficulties of every day.”
St. John Paul II wrote that we can draw an eloquent “Gospel of work” from the realization that God himself “devoted most of the years of his life on earth to manual work at the carpenter's bench.”
In a similar way, most of us spend our days in “hidden work” like that of Our Lord. How can his example direct our own daily work?
Here are a few things to learn from Jesus’ hidden years and apply to our own ordinary daily work:
1Our work can be our path to holiness
The Catechism tells us, “Work can be a means of sanctification and a way of animating earthly realities with the Spirit of Christ” (2427).
Expanding on this idea, St. Josemaria Escriva once wrote:
Our ordinary activities are not an insignificant matter. Rather they are the very hinge on which our sanctity turns, and they offer us constant opportunities of meeting God, and of praising him and glorifying him through our intellectual or manual work.
Jesus’ quiet and devoted work in the Nazareth workshop was a time of inner preparation for his ministry.
In the same way, our daily work, done well and with love, can be an inner preparation for our lasting home in heaven.
2It’s not what we do, but how we do it
Let’s not be discouraged by the humbleness of our task. Whether the work before us is big or small, all of it can be offered to God:
[Work] can be redemptive. By enduring the hardship of work in union with Jesus, the carpenter of Nazareth and the one crucified on Calvary, man collaborates in a certain fashion with the Son of God in his redemptive work. He shows himself to be a disciple of Christ by carrying the cross, daily, in the work he is called to accomplish.
Sometimes our work feels enjoyable, and sometimes it feels like we are absolutely carrying a cross! Yet all of it, no matter how difficult or tedious, can be done with care and love as an act of praise and sacrifice.
3Our work allows us to co-create with God
Something amazing to ponder is that work is not a consequence of sin, because it existed before the Fall. When we work, we actually imitate God in creation. We are so fortunate to become co-creators with Him and participate in the work of His Redemption:
The word of God's revelation is profoundly marked by the fundamental truth that man, created in the image of God, shares by his work in the activity of the Creator…
Reflecting on all this, what would it look like to approach our work as “a chance to co-create with God”?
How would our daily work change if we held onto a sense of God’s presence in our ordinary duties, like Our Lord during his hidden years?
And how would working in this way change us?
