What is God’s Plan for Family?

“The family finds in the plan of God the Creator and Redeemer not only its identity, what it is, but also its mission, what it can and should do. The role that God calls the family to perform in history derives from what the family is; its role represents the dynamic and existential development of what it is. Each family finds within itself a summons that cannot be ignored, and that specifies both its dignity and its responsibility: family, become what you are.

Looking at it in such a way as to reach its very roots, we must say that the essence and role of the family are in the final analysis specified by love. Hence the family has the mission to guard, reveal and communicate love, and this is a living reflection of, and a real sharing in, God's love for humanity and the love of Christ the Lord for the Church His bride.”

Pope St. John Paul II
miliaris Consortio #17 (italicized emphasis added)

 What is the School of Nazareth?

“Nazareth is a kind of school where we may begin to discover what Christ’s life was like and even to understand His Gospel. Here we can observe and ponder the simple appeal of the way God’s Son came to be known, profound yet full of hidden meaning. And gradually we may even learn to imitate Him.”

From an address by Pope St. Paul VI
(Nazareth, January 5, 1964)

 What is the Families of Nazareth Movement?

The Families of Nazareth Movement (FNM) is an accessible, Marian, spiritual movement, led by the Holy Spirit, that fosters personal communion with Jesus Christ through faith sharing, spiritual direction and ongoing formation. This formation may be sought individually, or in the context of family. This booklet is intended to be used by couples in the FNM who are living the vocation of marriage.

What is a Families of Nazareth Community?

A Families of Nazareth Community (FNC) typically consists of four to eight families who have chosen to make their homes a Little Nazareth by imitating the life of the Holy Family: Jesus, Mary and Joseph. The spirituality of Nazareth is filled with everyday, ordinary life. It consists of simplicity, a hidden life, trust, and life of prayer with the presence of God. The Holy Family led an extremely simple life – so simple that a proud person focused on the extraordinary cannot grasp the beauty of such life and admire it. For thirty years, the Lord Jesus himself lived a hidden life in Nazareth at the side of His Mother Mary and Saint Joseph the Guardian. He grew up in the family of Nazareth, leading an ordinary life filled with everyday activities that make up what we would call the reality of everyday life. The Lord Jesus, living in the privacy of each Little Nazareth’s home, sanctifies the everyday life of the family, making it a natural environment for human sanctification and maturation. In Nazareth, the life of the Lord Jesus was filled with work overseen by his guardian, Saint Joseph, a carpenter. In this way, work too has received an important place in the process of sanctification. Daily life and work have been elevated to the dignity of an important and crucial element for human development, vocation and sanctification.

The Families of Nazareth undertake the effort of spiritual work to sanctify themselves by living the spirituality of the Holy Family and to form their faith, hope and love based on the Holy Family’s values. The spirituality of Nazareth is therefore inspired by the spirit of life of the Holy Family. These families look for models and draw strength from the Holy Family to follow the path of God's plan, which has established the family as the fundamental reality of the call to holiness. The spirituality of Nazareth values everyday life, work, humility, meekness, duties of state, simplicity and life, hidden in the process of human spiritual growth. It is necessary to bring out of oblivion, anew with greater determination, the values lived by the Holy Family of Nazareth.

 How are the Spouses of the Families of Nazareth Community Led?

On the path of faith and reflection on the life of the Holy Family:

1)      They are awakened to a deep need to consciously lead a spiritual life, and to work on themselves in their own Little Nazareth.

2)      They discover the beauty and gift of daily life in the family, which becomes for them the fundamental environment for maturation and sanctification. The place where they are called to holiness is above all the family and its daily life: work, joys, problems, ups and downs.

3)      They cultivate the beauty of living in sanctifying grace by living a sacramental life. 

4)      They participate in the Sunday Eucharist together and receive the Sacrament of Penance every month, and they look for a permanent confessor or possibly a spiritual director for themselves or even the whole family, when such a spiritual need arises.

5)      They undertake an attempt to live in the spirit of prayer, without which there is no development of the spiritual life. They create their own style of daily prayer. Every day, preferably in the evening, at the end of the day, they recite at least one decade of the Rosary together.

6)      They open and reflect on Sacred Scripture, experiencing the Word of God as living and active (Cf. Heb 4:12); they are concerned about deepening their religious understanding and recognizing experiences of God and His action in their daily lives.

7)     Together they discern the scope of the so-called "duties of state in life" rising from their vocation to life in the sacrament of marriage and family, taking into account their current situation and the context of their own family.

8)      They discover the value of work, which is a special dimension of vocation and sanctification, not just providing for the material means of the family.

9)      They care about educating their children in faith and in the development of God's life in their souls, above all, through their personal witness. They see in their children the gift of Divine Providence and create for them an environment of faith and love.

10) They undertake the effort to build good relationships in their Little Nazareth by crushing their own egos and discovering the beauty of being born into unselfish love. 

11)  They recognize their own weaknesses and sinfulness in everyday life by struggling with various domestic problems, and wounded and tense relationships, which allows them to encounter God's forgiving and healing mercy.

12)  They discover the inner need to form a union with other families in order to support one another, grow in faith, and build the community of the Church.

Spiritual work in the Families of Nazareth takes place in an environment of daily activities and is never isolated from the real life of the family. Daily life is so rich in experiences and the true presence of God that it is fully sufficient to realize the path of the call to holiness. The animators of the spiritual life in the family are primarily the parents. They are the first to live their faith and share it with their children. They imitate Mary and Joseph in seeking God's will, and they listen to the hidden interior needs of their children. Parents pray for them and become increasingly aware that they have to constantly nurture their children’s faith at all stages of their maturation. They prepare children for independent and responsible living and for difficult confrontation with the world permeated by a temporal lifestyle – as if God did not exist. They cannot keep their children only for themselves, but offer them to God and watch over their development and formation. They are not discouraged by their own weaknesses or the confusion of their children as a result of their choices. They radically try to rely on trust in God and prayer, filled with hope that God will ultimately win.

Spouses, leading a hidden spiritual life, do not want spectacular or extraordinary worldly things for themselves. They love simple and ordinary everyday life, which is the greatest wealth for them and becomes something special, even a personal treasure entrusted to them by God. Here they find the hidden pearls of God's Presence and His true Love. In the reality of daily life in Little Nazareth, they also know and experience their own sinfulness, which opens the way to an encounter with the Merciful God and mutual forgiveness. They do not want to stand out and be proud of their spiritual life or faith. They lead a humble and hidden life, in dialogue with God in the privacy of their own family. They do not neglect, but on the contrary, they value the possibility of work, which is always a gift. Work and everyday life are a privileged dimension of growth and sanctification for them. It should never be considered solely a means of earning an income to support one's family or as a path to one's career in isolation from one's personal spiritual life.

Work is a gift from God, and this awareness should lead to it being carried out with an attitude of commitment and gratitude. The spirituality of Nazareth can be characterized by several basic concepts: prayer, daily life, work, humility, spiritual life, trust, entrustment, faith, simplicity and hidden life. Pastoral experience indicates that we must return to the spirituality of Nazareth, which nurtured the Savior, Jesus Christ, Himself.

The FNC’s spirituality is fully based and built on the teaching of the Church's Magisterium on marriage, family and spiritual life.

What does a Community Meeting Look Like?:

The Families of Nazareth Community meetings happen once a month. The purpose of the meeting is to pray together, to meditate on the Word of God, to listen to a spiritual conference, and to share life events in order to build the community of the Church, not closing oneself solely to one’s own family.

Meetings can be held in family homes if possible, because the family is the natural environment for growth and, at the same time, is a small church. The meeting can also take place in the church or its parish rooms. This is decided by each community. A married couple, who are chosen as the animators of the FNC, is responsible for organizing formation meetings. Every Community has its own Guardian Priest. Each monthly meeting is led by the animators. The meeting is held in a designated room where an image of the Holy Family of Nazareth or of the Mother of God, along with an open Bible and a lit candle is present in a significant place.

The animators begin the meeting and all pray the prayer to the Holy Family of Nazareth (see page 2), followed by the Decalogue for Grace-sharing (see page 11). Then the designated section of the Holy Scripture is read, and after a moment of silence, the written spiritual conference (individually reflected on during the prior week) is read out loud. Each participant is given an opportunity to “grace-share” how God is working in his/her life. Before the meeting concludes, the Guardian Priest gives a summary/spiritual direction in response to the sharing, and one decade of the Holy Rosary is prayed. At the end of the Rosary, the priest gives a Blessing.

The whole meeting can be crowned with a modest agape over refreshments. The meeting should not last longer than two or two and a half hours.

The artwork for the couples group was drawn by Kevin J. Marinelli, a beloved child of God on death row in Pennsylvania. Kevin gifted it to the FNM Community in Colorado in 2023.
Please pray for him.