Nazareth Was Never the Final Home

There are houses we leave that somehow never quite leave us.

Years can pass. Families change. People we love die. Rooms are remodeled. Someone else eventually sleeps in the bedroom that once belonged to us.

And yet we can still walk through those houses in our memory.

We remember how the light came through a certain window in the afternoon, where someone sat at the kitchen table, and the sound of a door opening.

The smell of something cooking.

The chair that belonged to Dad and the place where Grandma kept the coffee cups.

Home becomes much more than lumber, plaster, windows and doors.

Eventually, home becomes the people who were there.

I have been thinking about that today on the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Because perhaps Mary’s life can be understood, at least in part, as a journey from one home to another.

There was the home at Nazareth.

There was the home she was given after Calvary.

And finally there was the home for which every other home had been preparing her.

Heaven.

The House at Nazareth

When I think of Mary, I keep returning to Nazareth.

Not simply to Nazareth the town.

To the house.

That little house has become increasingly important to me, especially while writing my new book, Nazareth in England.

Christianity contains enormous things, cathedrals, councils, martyrs, miracles, and saints, to name but a few.

Two thousand years of theology, art, music and history.

But the Incarnation begins somewhere almost embarrassingly ordinary.

Inside a home.

A young woman is there.

An angel arrives.

A question is asked.

And Mary answers.

“Be it done unto me according to thy word.”

Then God comes into the house.

That mystery is at the heart of the ancient devotion to Our Lady of Walsingham. According to the tradition of Walsingham, Our Lady showed Richeldis de Faverches the Holy House of Nazareth and asked that a replica be built in England.

Walsingham would eventually become known as England’s Nazareth.

I wrote recently about this in The Little House That Leads Us Home, because there is something deeply moving to me about Mary pointing Christians toward a house.

Not toward a palace.

Not toward a throne.

A house.

The place where she first said yes, where Jesus grew up, and where Joseph worked.

The place where bread was broken, meals were eaten, and ordinary days passed one after another.

Nazareth reminds us that holiness does not necessarily begin somewhere spectacular.

Sometimes God enters through the front door.

Then Jesus Left Home

But Nazareth could not remain forever.

That is something every parent eventually discovers.

Children grow.

Doors close behind them.

Life moves forward whether our hearts are ready for it or not.

Jesus left Nazareth.

The quiet years ended.

There were roads and crowds and disciples.

Cana.

Capernaum.

Jerusalem.

There were healings, arguments, and miracles.

And eventually there was a hill called Calvary.

I sometimes wonder whether Mary thought about Nazareth while standing beneath the Cross.

Did she remember Him as a little boy?

Did she remember meals at that table?

Joseph’s workshop?

The sound of Jesus coming through the door?

Parents have an extraordinary ability to see many ages of their children at once.

The grown man standing before them is somehow still the child they once held.

Perhaps that is one of the reasons Michelangelo’s Pietà is so devastating.

Mary holds the body of the crucified Christ, and somehow we can almost see Bethlehem again.

The mother who once held Him at the beginning holds Him again near the end.

Except this time He is dead.

And the house at Nazareth must have seemed very far away.

“Behold, Your Mother”

Then, from the Cross, Jesus did something profoundly human.

He worried about His mother.

Seeing Mary and the beloved disciple, He entrusted them to one another:

“Woman, behold, your son.”

And to the disciple:

“Behold, your mother.”

The Gospel of John tells us that from that hour the disciple took her into his home.

I find those words enormously moving.

Jesus was dying.

And Mary needed a home.

Nazareth, at least as she had known it, was gone.

Joseph was gone.

Jesus was leaving her.

And so another door opened.

John’s.

We do not need to settle every historical question about where Mary subsequently lived to appreciate the tenderness of the Gospel scene. Scripture tells us what matters: Jesus made certain that His mother would not face what came next alone.

Mary went home with John.

Imagine that first evening.

The strange silence, the exhaustion, and the disbelief.

Perhaps there was food on a table that neither of them wanted to eat.

Perhaps John kept thinking of things he wanted to say, and then deciding there were no words.

And Mary had already experienced one of the cruel truths of human life:

Sometimes you must learn to live in a different home because the life you had before no longer exists.

That experience is not unique to Mary.

Many of us eventually discover it.

A spouse dies.

Parents die.

A marriage ends.

Children leave.

Health changes.

A house is sold.

A career disappears.

Something happens that divides life permanently into before and after.

And suddenly we are living someplace we never expected to live, emotionally if not physically.

Mary understands that road.

She walked it before us.

Easter Did Not Erase Good Friday

Then came Easter.

Jesus rose.

Everything changed.

But I doubt Easter simply erased the experience of Good Friday from Mary’s heart.

That is not how love works.

Resurrection does not mean the Cross never happened.

It means the Cross did not win.

And after the appearances of the risen Christ came another departure.

The Ascension.

Jesus returned to the Father.

The opening chapter of Acts gives us a beautiful little glimpse of Mary afterward. The apostles return to Jerusalem, gather in prayer, and Mary is there among them.

She is still doing what Mary always does.

Waiting.

Praying.

Trusting.

She had watched her Son leave Nazareth, watched Him die, and had encountered the mystery of His Resurrection.

She was there to witness the beginnings of the Church.

And now once again she had to live without physically seeing Him.

I find something deeply comforting about that.

Mary knew what it was to miss someone.

The Last Journey Home

Then came Mary’s final homecoming.

The Catholic Church teaches that when the course of her earthly life was completed, Mary was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church describes Mary’s Assumption as a unique participation in the Resurrection of Christ and an anticipation of the resurrection promised to Christians.

Pope Pius XII solemnly defined the dogma in Munificentissimus Deus in 1950.

But sometimes theological language, necessary as it is, can make something breathtaking sound almost clinical.

So put the theological terminology aside for a moment.

Mary went home.

That is the Assumption.

The woman who had spent her entire life following Jesus finally went where Jesus had gone.

The arms that held Him at Bethlehem were reunited with Him.

The eyes that watched Him from Nazareth to Calvary saw Him again in glory.

The mother who stood beneath the Cross was brought into the eternal victory of her Son.

Nazareth had been home.

John’s house had been home.

But neither was the final home.

Jesus was.

What Walsingham Has Been Saying All Along

And this is where I think the Assumption connects so beautifully with Our Lady of Walsingham.

The spirituality of Walsingham begins with the Holy House at Nazareth.

Mary invites us back there.

Come inside.

Remember what happened here, the Annunciation, the Incarnation, the little house where God chose to dwell among us.

But Walsingham cannot end at Nazareth.

Because Mary did not end at Nazareth.

The little house points beyond itself.

That is one of the central ideas behind my new book, Nazareth in England.

The book contains fourteen meditations on Our Lady of Walsingham, Nazareth, the Annunciation, Mary’s fiat, the Incarnation and the strange holiness of an ordinary house into which God entered.

But increasingly I think the deepest spiritual lesson of Nazareth is this:

A Christian home is never meant to be the final destination.

It is preparation.

Every good home gives us some small foretaste of another home.

Every dinner table where people love one another.

Each bedroom where a parent sits beside a frightened child.

Every kitchen where someone makes enough food for one more person.

Every doorway where someone waits for somebody to come back.

Each Christmas when the family somehow manages to gather again.

They are all little echoes.

Little Nazareths.

They teach our hearts what home means so that someday we might understand what Jesus meant when He spoke of preparing a place for us.

The Feast of People Who Are Homesick

Maybe that is why I think the Assumption is a feast for homesick people.

And I do not mean only people who miss a particular house.

There is another kind of homesickness.

A homesickness we sometimes cannot name.

You can feel it even while sitting inside your own house.

Something is missing.

Someone is missing.

Life does not feel quite complete.

C.S. Lewis wrote often about that strange longing for a country we have never visited.

Christianity gives that longing a name.

Heaven.

We were made for communion with God.

And no matter how beautiful our earthly homes become, none of them can completely satisfy that desire.

They were never supposed to.

Even Nazareth wasn’t enough forever.

Mary herself had to leave it.

Mary Shows Us Where the Road Ends

The Assumption therefore tells us something not only about Mary.

It tells us something about ourselves.

The Second Vatican Council called Mary, glorified in heaven, a sign of sure hope for the pilgrim People of God.

I love that word.

Pilgrim.

Because pilgrims are people between homes.

They have left one place but have not yet reached another.

That describes most of us better than we probably realize.

We are traveling.

Sometimes joyfully.

Oftentimes limping.

Sometimes carrying things we never expected to carry.

Other times wondering how much farther the road goes.

And ahead of us stands Mary.

Not as the destination.

Never as the destination.

She does what she has always done.

She points.

At Nazareth she points to Jesus, at Cana she points to Jesus, and at Calvary she remains beside Jesus.

At Walsingham she points us back toward the house where Jesus entered human life.

And in the mystery of the Assumption she points toward the place where Jesus has gone.

Home.

From Nazareth to Heaven

Maybe that is the image I want to carry with me on this Feast of the Assumption.

Mary walking through doors.

The door of the little house at Nazareth.

The door of John’s home after Calvary.

And finally a door no human hands could open for her.

The door into eternity.

Behind each door was Jesus.

First hidden within her.

Then growing beside her.

Then leaving her.

Ultimately dying before her.

Then risen.

Then ascended.

And finally welcoming His mother home.

Perhaps that is what Mary wants to teach us through Nazareth.

Not how to remain safely inside the little house forever.

But how to live there well enough that we learn where home really is.

That is why Walsingham matters.

That is why Nazareth matters.

And that is ultimately why I wrote Nazareth in England.

Because Mary still seems to be standing in the doorway of that little house, inviting us inside.

Come and remember.

Come and learn how God enters ordinary life.

Come and learn how to say yes.

Come and learn how to love Jesus.

But eventually she turns toward another road.

And she points beyond Nazareth.

Beyond Walsingham.

Beyond every house we have ever loved and every person whose absence has left an empty chair at our table.

There.

That is where my Son is.

That is where we are going.

Come home.

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Continue the Journey

If this reflection spoke to you, you may also enjoy my earlier reflection, The Little House That Leads Us Home, exploring the story and spirituality of Our Lady of Walsingham.

You can find more reflections on faith, family, memory, suffering, grace and the places where God meets us at Food For The Way.

And if you would like to journey more deeply into the spirituality of Nazareth and Our Lady of Walsingham, my new book Nazareth in England offers fourteen meditations on Mary, the Holy House, the Annunciation, the Incarnation and our own journey home to Christ.