Place

Nazareth is a vibrant city of over 75,000 people, two-thirds Muslim and one-third Christian. It is the largest Palestinian Arab city in Israel, built alongside Old Nazareth, which has a largely Jewish population. Nazareth is dominated by the massive Basilica of the Annunciation, visible from every part of the town. It is, of course, also one of the most important centres for Christian pilgrimage in the world – the hometown of Jesus, we believe, for 30 years of his life, the place where so little is known about him except what he became. 

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Symbol

Nazareth is not just a specific place, it also symbolises a spiritual home – the place of dreaming, the place of formation, the place of nurture, the place of becoming. It is the place of the incarnation that, as Christians, we carry with us wherever we are; the place where ‘the Word is made flesh’. Nazareth is not just the place of incarnation then, it is the story of God’s presence with us now. And at the present time it is only too clear to us all how this Holy Land, this place of meeting of faiths and cultures, is also the place of conflict. Christ’s formation takes place in the midst of the world as it is, not as we would like it to be.

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Silence

We call the years that Jesus spent in Nazareth ‘the silent years’. That is just it – it is in silence, unannounced and on the edge, that the gospel finds the soil to take root and begin to grow in real lives. Our Nazareth Community begins not with explanation or information, but by sharing silence – opening up before one another and before God our unknowing. 

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With God with Others 

Nazareth embodies socially, in the face-to-face and shoulder-to-shoulder embedding of God’s divinity in human community ... Nazareth is important, not because it is a stage on the way to something more significant, but precisely because it is an extended window into heaven: God and humanity in peaceable interaction, perhaps with good work, perhaps with shared food, perhaps with learning and growing and nurturing and celebrating, but fundamentally just being, because there is no better place to be, and no better company to keep and no better thing to be doing – the crown of creation; simply being with God. 

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Home

Nazareth is the place of Christ’s home. It is God’s home. Nazareth is sharing space with God. God becomes our home and we become God’s home in us. Nazareth is not just a chance meeting, or a layby, or comfort break on the road. It is a relationship – a journey with God through the many years of our lives that continues to grow and change us. It’s the place where we become what we are. It is the Word made flesh. Much of this will be unseen. It’s the place of familiarity and intimacy but also the place of longing and challenge, because Nazareth is somehow always beyond us. It’s also a place we cannot cling to, but must be ready to share and give away again and again. In the Nazareth Community we are seeking to make our home in God and for Christ to make his home in us. That meeting is the incarnation.

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We go down to Nazareth

‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven’ (Matthew 5.3). In Nazareth, God shows what that dwelling with God looks like. He takes the last place. Not a place of world recognition or fame, but an obscure town which is not even mentioned in the Old Testament. ‘Can any good come out of Nazareth?’ We go down to Nazareth to meet Christ – down. We meet him when we go down, right down. At the very bottom of our lives, he is waiting for us. And here in the very last place, often where we can go no lower, we find him. At the bottom of our souls. There is room here, not for a pious holiness or anything that excludes. There is room to be formed by the gospel again and again. At the very heart of our religious life, if it’s to be authentic, there is this self-emptying. We will only become who we are by our genuine simplicity and humility. A humility that makes room for the Christ who has no place to lay his head – so makes us his dwelling place. In the last place – outside the camp is so often where we meet Christ, not only in his life-time but also now. Outside – among all those “others” relegated to a place outside the camp. As Charles de Foucauld wrote:

Itinerancy demands going outside the institution, outside the culturally conditioned perceptions and beliefs… for it is outside the camp that we meet the Other who is different and discover who we are and what we are to do.

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Heaven in ordinary

When we take our promise to join the Nazareth Community, this is our prayer: ‘I want to live the Gospel, O Lord, give me grace.’ Nazareth is like a carpenter’s workshop. It is the place where we learn to live the gospel. Nazareth, as it was for Jesus, is a hidden place. It is not the place for competition, fame, jealousy or selfish pride. And neither is it private property. It belongs to all. It’s our hidden place with God – without delusion, without pretence, just as we are. As Charles de Foucauld wrote: 

Let Nazareth be your model, in all its simplicity and breadth ... like Jesus in Nazareth; have no cloister ... In a word, in all things: live like Jesus in Nazareth ... The life of Nazareth can be lived anywhere: live it where it is most useful for your neighbour. 

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Sisters and Brothers to All

We aim to be brothers and sisters to all. It is not a soft romantic faith, for it will have to be strong and courageous if it is to survive the onslaught and suspicions of the modern world. But its strength will be its simplicity, its genuine love. By their fruits you will know them. As Charles de Foucauld said:

If such is the servant, what must the master be like?

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Nazareth is the heart of our Christian calling. It is not an invention of the mind. It is a warmth, a love without sides, an openness to God and one another, a care, a compassion, a call to humble service, a gift of time that is so needed in our church and in our world. It is the place we make space in our lives to be with God and to grow in body and spirit. Nazareth is a calling to live the hidden life of Jesus and to be at the side of the most forgotten. 

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Dwelling With

What an adventure to find the home where Jesus lives, to dwell in that space with him, to listen to him speak, see him sleep, witness his work, recognise his miracle and mystery every day. Be attentive because this forgotten carpenter’s son you meet is the Son of God.