English Orphanage: Nazareth
The thirty years from the time of the return from Egypt to the beginning of the ministry of our Savior are passed over by St. John and St. Mark in absolute silence. St. Luke tells us that “The child grew and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was upon him.” Two or three times we have been permitted to look at this Orphanage. It is a Protestant memorial on a sacred site, commanding a charming view and serving a philanthropic, a Christian purpose. It connects the thought of childhood in our day with the childhood of Jesus. One almost envies the good people who are permitted in this place to do this work. Farrar says: “The education of the Jewish boy of the humbler classes was almost solely Scriptural and moral, and His parents, as a rule, were his sole teachers.” Marion Harland says: “Those who have Christian parents think and speak of Him as do the children of other Christian countries. The rest know little of Him, and care nothing for Him. We have here Sunday and day schools, in which the Bible is taught, and the story of our Lord’s life and death is well known to the members of the Latin and Greek churches.” “His infancy, a sinless childhood, a sinless boyhood, a sinless youth, a sinless manhood, was spent here in humility, toil, obscurity, submission, contentment and prayer,” “and whatever Jesus may have learned when a child in the house of His mother or in the synagogue, His best teaching was derived from immediate insight into His Father’s will.” He seemed to be doing nothing wonderful. The saintly Bonaventura said that “His doing nothing wonderful was in itself a kind of wonder. For His whole life was a mystery—there was power in His silence.”
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