Things Jesus of Nazareth Likely Said

The Gospels are jam-packed with miracles that Jesus performed throughout His public ministry and parables that He told.  They’re filled with the infancy narrative, and with His Passion, Death, and Resurrection.  However, the vast majority of the life of Jesus remains relatively unknown and undocumented.  The Gospels skip from Joseph and Mary finding Jesus in the temple when He is just on the cusp of His teenage years, to His public ministry when He is thirty years old.  The Gospels were written with a specific purpose in mind, and so it makes sense that these somewhat uneventful years in the life of Christ were omitted.  However, us Christians today are left with only the highlights of Jesus’ life, and must resort largely to our imaginations to discern what those “uneventful” times might have looked like.  Praying and meditating on these undocumented years of the life of Christ is important because, like Jesus, the majority of our lives do not consist of extreme highlights, such as vacations, weddings, or welcoming a child into the world; rather, they are spent in relative repetition, doing the same or similar things over and over again, day in and day out.  When we’re bogged down by the mundane aspects of life – doing the dishes, commuting to work, folding laundry, shuffling kids around town – we can often fall into the trap of thinking that there is no merit or meaning in these tasks, and everything will improve if we can just finish them as quickly as possible and move on.  Yet, in those moments, the “uneventful” times in Jesus’ life can be a source of great comfort and solace to us.  God Himself became man and took on human flesh, and spent the majority of His life doing these repetitive tasks too.   So, if we are faced with some horrendous physical suffering, meditating on Christ’s Passion might make sense.  But for the suffering that comes along from performing the mundane tasks of everyday life, when life begins to look increasingly more like a list of to-dos, we can meditate on the undocumented life of Christ, which no doubt included hard work, chores, and the harsh realities of first-century living, and we can run to the One who proclaimed, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.”  (Matthew 11:28-29).

When meditating on the life of Christ, I have to imagine that Jesus probably performed nearly all of His tasks with a better disposition than I perform mine.  He was probably the epitome of St. Thérèse of Lisieux’s Little Way, and performed His regular work and chores with great charity and love.  Though He was fully divine, he was also fully human, and He would have been subject to the same or similar limitations that we are.  In fact, we know this to be true.  “In the morning, as he was returning to the city, he was hungry.”  (Matthew 21:18).  We know that Jesus would have grown tired of tending to His flock at times, needing time to rest, pray, and recuperate.  “And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up into the hills by himself to pray.”  (Matthew 14: 23).  If these things are true during the time of Christ’s public ministry, surely they would have been true throughout His life.  If He experienced hunger and fatigue, what else did He experience? Taking Jesus’ human nature into account, below is a list of phrases that I imagine Jesus may have uttered during the undocumented years of His life.   

·      To Joseph: “I’m tired, how much longer do you want to work?”

·      To Mary: “I’m hungry, will dinner be ready soon? Is there anything I can do to help?”

·      At the dinner table: “Can you please pass the wine?”

·      In the morning: “I did not sleep very well last night.”

·      To guests: “Welcome, can I get you anything?”

·      Generally: “Excuse me, I need to go to the restroom.”

·      Generally: “I’m cold, do we have another blanket?”

·      Generally: “It will be nice when this is over so we can rest.”

·      To Joseph and Mary: “Our home has gotten dirty and we need to clean.”

·      To Joseph: “Dad, can we do X together?”

·      Generally: “I cannot believe that.  I’m devastated.”

·      Generally: “Ouch, I just stubbed my toe.”

The purpose of pondering what Jesus may have said or felt is not to diminish His divine nature, but to emphasize His human nature. What makes the Incarnation so incredible, so incomprehensible, is that God, He who Is, became man, and experienced fatigue, hunger, weakness, sorrow, and pain.  Just as we grow weary of work, of chores, and of being around others, so too did Jesus of Nazareth, the only difference being that He didn’t fall into sin because of it.  The purpose of this is also to unite our lives, our sufferings, and our work with Christ’s.  Not just during life threatening illness or terrible grief, but throughout every moment of our lives.  Indeed, Jesus can relate to just about every emotion, sorrow, and burden we feel and endure.  Thus, let us unite our daily tasks, chores, and work with the One who endured these things too, but did not sin.  And let us conform our lives, no matter how mundane or repetitive or seemingly unimportant, with His, knowing that He became man, took on the form of a slave, and endured until the end, doing little things with great love.

Liam

03/22/2025