Every one of us has an important life story, though it's important for reasons you may not have considered. Pope Francis tells us that what makes our lives important is how well we radiate joy (and hope) to the world around us. Our joy begins with our appreciation of the riches of our ordinary lives.
When we look at Jesus' "hidden life" - the life he led before he began his ministry at thirty - we see that our lives are very much like his: ordinary. But Jesus teaches us how to make our ordinary lives extraordinarily rich, fulfilling, and full of joy.
Jesus would have known or been known by most if not all the inhabitants of his small town. He probably lived with his cousins (or siblings, if Joseph was a widower with children when he married Mary) in the same small stone house among nearby houses filled with relatives. Like us, Jesus grew up understanding family: the love of many close relatives, children playing and feuding together, all grieving together at a relative's death. Jesus lived in a supportive web of close relationships. His later deep friendships - with his apostles and men and women disciples, with Mary, Martha, and Lazarus - were possible because he had learned the joy of a family life of emotional intimacy in Nazareth.
Jesus' family belonged to the artisan class, likely near the bottom rung of the economic ladder. Jesus understood poverty from first-hand experience. In his later life, Jesus treated the poor with compassion and talked to his followers about treating the poor with kindness; his compassion had grown from the days of his own experiences of economic uncertainty during his "hidden years." Between twelve and eighteen, he was probably apprenticed to Joseph to learn his trade of woodworker. The two worked in the hot sun, plying their trade, lugging their tools to surrounding villages and towns to support the family. Jesus may even have been a "tekton": "a carpenter, stonemason, cartwright, and joiner all rolled into one." (Fr. Martin.)
An undoubtedly strong, muscular Jesus was well acquainted with physically hard work. He cut down trees, lugging the heavy logs back to the house to fashion planks for lintels and doors. He worked alongside other laborers - builders, stone carvers, roofers, and masons - who would also be constructing houses - and so he learned how to cooperate and even lead. He learned the joy of developing his skills and talents, making beds, tables, stools, lamp stands, and perhaps even plows and yokes. In "Jesus A Pilgrimage," Fr. Martin says
"In Jesus' day, only the most talented tekton would have been able to fashion a good yoke for oxen (perfectly made to fit the team of oxen, so that it caused no chafing or discomfort.) When Jesus said "My yoke is easy and my burden is light,' did people of his day, who knew what an easy yoke was, smile to themselves and say, 'Yes, he did make good yokes"? Was he subtly playing on their knowledge of his background?"
Later, many of Jesus' parables would be about work and workers, because he knew the value of a hard day's work and what it meant to give and receive fair pay. He compared those who acted on his words to a builder building on a foundation of solid rock because he knew intimately what it took to build a solid house. He told stories based on the ordinary life he had led, a life he held in high esteem and importance. He knew that his life story made him the singular person he was, even as our life stories make us the singular people we are.
Jesus' hidden life teaches us that no one is too "ordinary" to be holy, that everyone's life story is important. Fr. Martin comments "...for most of his life, Jesus was just a carpenter in a little, nowhere town....This is why his townspeople and family and friends were so shocked when he began his public ministry: 'Is not this the carpenter?' Jesus shows us the inestimable value of ordinary time....During Jesus' time in Nazareth, God fashioned him into the instrument God needed for the salvation of the world.' In Nazareth, Jesus speaks to the meaning and worth of our ordinary lives."