John Everett Millais was an English painter, founder of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood,. He did a revolutionary painting, showing the holy family as «ordinary», and for that he was very much criticised by the press. Nevertheless we can see, with words of Pope Paul VI, how the life in Nazareth it has been very important for Christ and for christians:

«Nazareth is the school in which we begin to understand the life of Jesus. It is the school of the Gospel. Here we learn to observe, to listen, to meditate, and to penetrate the profound and mysterious meaning of that simple, humble, and lovely manifestation of the Son of God. And perhaps we learn almost imperceptibly to imitate Him. Here we learn the method by which we can come to understand Christ (…). It is here, in this school, that one comes to grasp how necessary it is to be spiritually disciplined, if one wishes to follow the teachings of the Gospel and to become a follower of Christ. Oh, how We would like to repeat, so close to Mary, Our introduction to the genuine knowledge of the meaning of life, and to the higher wisdom of divine truth!»

Christ in the House of His Parents (`The Carpenter’s Shop’), John Everett Millais, 1849, Tate Britain, LONDRES

We can see in the painting some symbols of the Crucifixion: the wood, the nails, the cut in Christ’s hand and the blood on his foot.

The Pope continues saying what lessons we can learn from the Holy Family’s home:

«The lesson of silence: may there return to us an appreciation of this stupendous and indispensable spiritual condition, deafened as we are by so much tumult, so much noise, so many voices of our chaotic and frenzied modern life (…). The lesson of domestic life: may Nazareth teach us the meaning of family life, its harmony of love, its simplicity and austere beauty, its sacred and inviolable character; may it teach is how sweet and irreplaceable is its training, how fundamental and incomparable its role on the social plane (…). The lesson of work: O Nazareth, home of “the carpenter’s son,” We want here to understand and to praise the austere and redeeming law of human labor, here to restore the consciousness of the dignity of labor…»

Pope Paul VI, January 5, 1964, at the Basilica of the Annunciation in Nazareth.