The Home Life of Mary and Joseph in Nazareth

by Colleen Rooney

In the Gospel of St. Luke, we find the Archangel Gabriel appearing to the virgin Mary who is betrothed to a man named Joseph. He tells her of God’s plan for her to bear His Son. Mary responds to God’s design with a question. After receiving the answer, she responds with her fiat, “Thy will be done.” After hearing this news, she leaves her home in Nazareth for the hill country of Judaea, where her cousin Elizabeth in her old age is expecting a child. After spending about three months with Elizabeth and her husband, Zachary, Mary returns to Nazareth. Joseph has not seen Mary for a few months and as the Gospel of Matthew tells us, he saw that she was with child. He knew the child was not his, and it caused him great consternation to see his lovely Mary in an inexplicable way. After much suffering, Joseph was told in a dream that the child Mary was carrying was the fruit of the Holy Spirit, and so with this peaceful explanation the two of them could begin their virginal and chaste married life together. Mary and Joseph were observant Jews. They followed the law, the Torah, its commandments, and proscriptions. The Jewish calendar with its months, weeks, and days of Sabbath worship, feasts and rituals were part of their everyday life. They were of the tribe of Judah, and in the royal line of the great King David. They had awaited the promise to King David: “And when your days are fulfilled and you rest with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, who will come from your own body, and I will establish his kingdom.” (2 Sam.7:12.) ‘Mary and Joseph now shared the secret of that great promise. For in Mary, the promise would be fulfilled with Joseph by her side to support her and bring the Divine Child up according to the Jewish Law. Sharers of the secret of God’s Divine

Plan, Mary and Joseph lived a normal, everyday life in first century Palestine. Their day would begin early in the morning. They would rise at dawn to feed their animals. They might have a young goat or two inside with them and a donkey outside. Mary and Joseph slept on a dirt floor on mats. The mats were rolled up after rising and placed in niches in the wall of their one-room house. Most homes in Nazareth were small, usually one room or, for some, a two-room house. The roof of the house was used for eating, sleeping when it was too hot to sleep inside and to weave clothing on the loom. Many homes were of stone; some were caves carved out of the side of a hill. The inside of the home had a separate area for the animals that was a step lower than the sleeping and cooking/ eating area of Mary and Joseph. There was no running water or lighting as we know it. No plumbing. Rainwater was caught in cisterns, or Mary would walk to the community well and draw water to carry home. There were jugs which held water for washing. Ritual cleansing (“mikvah”), a requirement for Sabbath worship if one defiled

themselves according to the laws of the Torah, post-menstrual cleaning, or to recognize a special occasion such as marriage, etc., occurred in community baths. Small lamps made of clay contained oil which could be lit to provide some light in the evening. After rising early and feeding the animals, Joseph would lead the couple in the Shema. Here is its beginning: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is One Lord.” (Deut. 6:4.) They would pray it in the morning and in the evening. It was a required prayer for Joseph as for all Jewish men after their bar mitzvah. After praying, the couple would eat a small meal of dates, yogurt, or figs. They would drink watered down wine. Mary would then begin preparing the bread for the evening meal. She would use a starter for the barley bread. On feast days she would prepare bread with wheat flour. Barley was more abundant. It was ground into flour with a mortar and pestle and combined with the starter for a nutritious and substantial bread. Some women had small cook stoves for cooking pits outside of homes. Others would take their prepared bread to the community oven and bake it there. Baking bread was a long, tedious process compared to 21st century KitchenAid mixers or bread machines. Joseph would start his workday fulfilling the woodworking orders of those in Nazareth. He might be making a door frame, a box to hold household implements, a reclining table, window frames, benches, and other pieces of furniture common to first century Palestine. Both Mary and Joseph would stop midday to rest from the heat of the day and perhaps, but not always, have some small meal. The Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C., has an area devoted to life at the time of Jesus. There are many authentic replicas of the home and the Nazareth community that bring to life the realities of the simple way Mary and Joseph lived together as a married couple and later the life that the Incarnate Word shared with them.