Site of Joseph’s Work Shop

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The most massive structure in the little town of Nazareth is the Latin Monastery. A little to the northeast of this building is the traditional House or Work Shop of Joseph. The Franciscans gained possession of this spot about the middle of the last century. It is hardly worth while to describe the modern chapel, built in 1859, for it lacks the flavor of antiquity, but this we know that in this little town Jesus grew up from infancy to youth. Here he, too, spent the years of his ripening manhood in humble labor. It was his home, a home of trustful piety, of purity and of peace. This we may believe with Joseph to guide, with Mary to hallow and sweeten it, and with Jesus to illuminate it with the very light of heaven. When Joseph returned to Nazareth, to the calm, untroubled seclusion of that happy valley, he knew that the life of the Virgin and of the Holy Child would be spent with him in honest poverty and in manual toil. One writer says: “We may safely infer that these years in the home and trade of the carpenter were happy years in our Savior’s life. Jesus chose voluntarily ‘the low estate of the poor.’ ” Throughout the whole of his life, our Lord was poor. If tradition is true, Joseph held a very humble position as carpenter, was “not very skillful and received, probably, a very moderate competence, and with him Christ labored, working with his own hands.” Farrar in his life of Christ says: “It has tended to console and sanctify the estate of povery; to ennoble the duty of labor; to elevate the entire conception of manhood, as of a condition which in itself alone and apart from every adventitious circumstance, has its own grandeur and dignity in the sight of God.”