It is pretty much a commonplace around here that “Nazareth” is part of a contemplative spirituality lived in the world. Another commonplace would be the association of Charles de Foucauld with this theme. It is evidently not something he and his spiritual family have a monopoly on, though. One spiritual figure who gave a lot of attention to Nazareth, but whose writing on this topic I haven’t given its due, is my beloved Marcel Văn.

Part of the reason for this neglect is that it is only in the past few years that the Other Writings, the last volume in the complete works, have been published. Before this, all we had were the Autobiography, the Conversations, and the Correspondence. Indeed, when I was previously publishing a lot on little Văn, not only had the Other Writings not been published in English, they hadn’t even appeared yet in French; I was even working from the French text for the letters. The literature on Marcel Văn has expanded quite a bit since I started the blog.

While I previously noticed some discussion of Nazareth even in the earlier-published works, the picture emerges with much more clarity now. To start a deeper dive, I will look at the Conversations. In this work, there are some aspects of a Nazareth spirituality stated explicitly, others implicitly, which it is really profitable to consider.

Ordinary

Among the things the Conversations indicate, it is probably worth noting that Văn believed that, “outwardly,” Jesus did nothing that could distinguish him from others of his time and place, as did Mary (Conv. 422)[1] and presumably Joseph too—a thought that belongs among the basics of any meditation on the mystery of Nazareth.

Their life consisted, as Marcel’s does as a simple religious brother working around the house, not a priest, in “very ordinary little things.” But Marcel knows that nothing ordinary is truly ordinary with God present: “In the eyes of Love, these little things, far from being ordinary, are very precious” (Conv. 537). With an eye to the external, ordinary; yet looking at the internal value, extraordinary. That is Nazareth. This is a preliminary. It’s something to take for granted. This is the kind of life we must be concerned with when thinking about Nazareth spirituality. Marcel knows it.

Everywhere

Another big stroke of genius of Văn is that the love of Jesus has to be implanted everywhere, absolutely everywhere. This is present in the Conversations: “I would wish to join the ranks of the Vietminh so that, among them, there might be a little soul that loves you” (Conv. 554). It is also apparent in Marcel’s choice to return to Hanoi after the communists had it under their control (SH 37).[2] And he retains the conviction in the voice of God that speaks to him in the reeducation camp, responding to his wish to die and be with God: “I am quite ready to follow your will as you always follow mine, but there are souls who still have need of you; without you, it would be impossible for me to reach them. So, what then do you think, my child?” (To Father Denis Paquette, 20 Jul 1956).[3]

In these cases, as far as I know, Văn does not explicitly tie his thoughts and action to the mystery of Nazareth. His tendency is very general. Quite simply, “one can become holy anywhere, without the need to choose such or such a place” (To Brother Andrew, 22 Mar 1950). And Marcel believes that holiness increases union with others, wherever we happen to be: “the more I see myself close to God, the more I remain tightly attached to those I love” (To Thơm, Nov 1948). This latter thought is something he repeats a lot in his correspondence.

But it would probably be a mistake to altogether disassociate Marcel’s thoughts on the “everywhere and anywhere” of holiness from Nazareth. Coming at it from the perspective of, say, Charles de Foucauld, the inspiration is clear. That is how the Holy Family lived at Nazareth, is it not? Marcel Văn values both Nazareth and the living of the love of the Gospel in each place, no matter how horrible how destroyed, how far removed—which we could say, even if he doesn’t come out and say, is the same thing, the same mystery, the same supernatural reality.

Bringing up Brother Charles and comparing his thought and action to that of Brother Marcel is fruitful. There is another point here. Marcel does not think, like Charles mistakenly thought, that Jesus chose the absolutely lowest place of material poverty. Văn has no bourgeois hang-ups about manual labour. He projects far less. For Marcel, Jesus’ family was not as poor as his own; it was poor and “had absolutely nothing” in some senses but in others was still relatively well off (Conv. 422). And that seems historically right. There is a nuanced mixture of poverty and riches in Marcel’s vision of the Holy Family. He might exaggerate a bit in the direction of poverty, but his notion that his own family is currently worse off than Jesus’ certainly counterbalances any excesses. Poverty isn’t where he’ll try to focus his gaze. It’s elsewhere.

Hidden

From the earliest hours of his vocation, Văn is aware that, if he is not called to be a priest, he is called to some kind of hidden apostolate. Thérèse reveals to him that he will live “a hidden life where you will be an apostle by sacrifice and prayer” and that he will be “hidden in the heart of God in order to be the vital force of the missionary apostles” (A 651).[4] Marcel expresses it himself saying that he must do “work in great secret” (Conv. 388). He professes, “I have buried myself in this monastery”—buried, hidden, almost unseen (To Father Louis Roy, 25 Jan 1949). He tells a seminarian friend that God “has manoeuvred skilfully to hide me behind a secret curtain, in the cage of his divine breast, to fill there the function of ‘heart,’ and become for priests a living force” (To Lãng, 22 Apr 1951). At least once the hiddenness of Văn’s apostolate is placed in Nazareth itself:

Externally, God seems to have wrapped me in a cloak without much sparkle or beauty so that his work in me may not easily appear to the eyes of men. Just as in the obscure corner of the stable of Bethlehem or under the roof of the little house in Nazareth, who knew that the son of the carpenter was the master of heaven? Jesus makes use of the same manner to hide his intimacy with his very small friend, letting it be seen to only a small number of souls. (To Father Antonio Boucher, 12 Jun 1951)

Perhaps rarely explicitly tied to Nazareth, this hiddenness is nonetheless a constant in Marcel’s writings, across the Autobiography, the Conversations, and his letters—and his notebooks.

The logic is, as Pope Francis recently said to the Little Sisters of Jesus, “the more hidden, the more divine.” Văn will not be seen. He will not be the face of a church, a religious house, a movement. But this will free him up in some supernatural way. He can delve into the heart of God. Rather like Thérèse finding her vocation to “be love in the heart of the Church,”[5] Marcel must live a hidden life to pump love elsewhere in the Mystical Body. His big sister is in the Heart of the Church. He himself is in the Heart of God. It rather amounts to the same thing.

It is worth noting that this is no violence to Marcel’s personality, dispositions, and needs. God meets him where he is. In fact, God probably raises Văn to a little more visibility than he’d ever seek himself. But he lets him have his hiddenness in great measure, too. Marcel writes of his own inclination:

Truly people cannot make me feel comfortable; there is only Jesus, there is only Love, which can do so. When I am alone in the presence of Love, I feel joyful, radiant; but as soon as I enter into contact with people, I lose all my naturalness. (Conv. 473–474)

In other words, he is naturally shy. He is reticent. He is sensitive. Things hurt him a lot (A 4, 9–10; To Father Antonio Boucher, 16 Jul 1950). He puts on a bold face and carries on, as anyone who has read anything by him knows. But where he understands himself at ease is alone with his “little Jesus.” God lets him have it. It is a good work.

Childhood

During the Conversations, which are mystical discussions with Jesus (and occasionally Thérèse or Mary), Marcel questions Jesus on what he did at Nazareth (Conv. 360–367, 421–423, 607–608). A lot of these details are worth reading. Yet they don’t tend to say very much. I don’t think Marcel’s imagination of another culture so far removed in both time and space would be up to much more than he gets. But the general gist is that Jesus, too, was a child, then an adolescent. And he really, truly was those things. This was life at Nazareth. Jesus was like other children. For Marcel, this is revelatory and beautiful. He had “played with” the Child Jesus as a toddler, long before he heard of Thérèse or went to the seminary (A 46–51). To think of Nazareth as a locus of childhood is always a reunion. It is doubly so when Jesus throws Văn concrete details for his imagination. As Gilles Berceville says, commenting on one of these passages, “Van bathes in the joy of this reunion” with Jesus.[6]

Childhood in Nazareth is so beautiful to him that it connects parts of his understanding together. The themes of childhood and hiddenness sometimes join up. As Jesus says of Marcel’s plans to play hide and seek, “I already know your hiding place” (Conv. 569). Not only is hiddenness Marcel’s default psychological setting, it is known as such by Jesus; but even more than this, Jesus can express it in terms that evoke his own childhood at Nazareth, tying things up in a neat bow. We can stay at Nazareth to define Nazareth. We can stay in spiritual childhood to define Nazareth. We can stay in hiddenness to define Nazareth.

Obedience

In the Conversations, Jesus speaks mystically to Marcel about his own obedience at Nazareth. This is actually one of the few things the Gospels say to us about the mystery of Nazareth: “Then he went down with them and came to Nazareth and was obedient to them, and his mother treasured all these things in her heart” (Lk 2:51 NRSV). Usually, this is presented as some top-down view that Jesus did as he was told. That might have some merit to it. But I doubt it can exhaust the mystery. Even from the point of view of reading the Gospel, shouldn’t it matter a lot that this obedience, whatever kind it was, however it manifested, is part of what Mary treasured in heart? Doesn’t it matter that it is something that can truly, deeply be contemplated?

At any rate, Marcel’s Jesus sees—and says—something else than just a mechanical, moralistic view regarding obedience. He points out that obedience was his form of asceticism (Conv. 556–557): “At Nazareth, did I take on fasting and mortification? Did I give myself the discipline? No. I knew only how to obey.” The notion of obedience at Nazareth will come back in the notebooks (e.g., OWN0.17).[7] For now, let me retain just a general idea.

Marcel realizes that you don’t have to do extraordinary penances and mortifications to be a saint. This was always something that had worried him. It’s beyond his powers. He knows it. Of course, the little way of Thérèse had freed him from this burden (A 567–572). But the discussion with Jesus is even more inclusive of Văn’s personal experience. And it explains things not as a general form, but rooted in the mystery of Nazareth. Gilles Berceville indicates the logic quite well:

Creation is given to us by God. To use it is therefore to obey it. To reject it could not be the meaning of the asceticism of the saints. They had in fact offered themselves to God to repair, through their mortifications, the excesses committed by human beings… The obedience expected of Van is therefore that he always makes his own needs known to God, without demanding anything. He then follows in the steps of Jesus who relied in everything on the will of his mother in Nazareth, and throughout his life on that of his heavenly Father, and did nothing, no extraordinary maceration, for God, for himself, or for others, of his own initiative.[8]

What the saints did, if they were truly capable of it by God’s grace and God’s initiative, is not wrong. But to scorn creation in itself, which is something Marcel truly loves at the level of loving the world of nature, is anathema. So, if you can’t do more—or rather, if God isn’t inspiring you to do more—remain in obedience. First obedience is to the created order. (This is, incidentally, one reason why consumerist attitudes and the mistreatment of our common home are so reprehensible from a Christian perspective.) Obedience targets the way things are in general and the way things are for us. If we are little, so be it. Jesus himself was little. That’s Nazareth. You can’t improve on it.

What I can do, however, is improve on this post. Marcel says a lot in his Conversations, but he arguably says even more in his notebooks, only recently published. Join in for the second part to this short series on the Nazareth of Marcel Văn later this week.

[1] Conv. = Marcel Van, Conversations, trans. Jack Keogan (Complete Works 2; Versailles: Amis de Van Éditions, 2017).

[2] SH = Father Antonio Boucher, Short History of Van (Versailles: Amis de Van Éditions, 2017). References to section number, not page number.

[3] To = Marcel Van, Correspondence, trans. Jack Keogan (Complete Works 3; Versailles: Amis de Van Éditions, 2018).

[4] A = Marcel Van, Autobiography, trans. Jack Keogan (Complete Works 1; Versailles: Amis de Van Éditions, 2019).

[5] Ms B, 3r–4v, in Story of a Soul: The Autobiography of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, trans. John Clarke (Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 1976), 192–196.

[6] Gilles Berceville, Marcel Van, ou l’infinie pauvreté de l’Amour (Paris: Éditions de l’Émmanuel, 2009), 118.

[7] OW = Marcel Van, Other Writings, trans. Jack Keogan (Complete Works 4; Versailles: Amis de Van Éditions, 2018). Additional system for abbreviations explained on page 14, e.g., OWN = notebooks; OWV = various writings.

[8] Berceville, Marcel Van, 125.