Reflection by Rev. Leonard N. Peterson
My calling precludes me from experiencing the stomach-churning fear of a parent dealing with a lost child. This was the case for Mary and Joseph as Jesus is temporarily lost among the crowds heading home from the Passover celebration in Jerusalem. Having made this annual trip 11 times before, traveling with the same caravan each time, at first the holy couple presumed that their boy was in the company of boys and girls his age. But He wasn’t. What a shock it was to find that out.
When they did meet up with Jesus at the end of their search, right back at the Temple, Blessed Mother Mary had every right to offer a scold. The elderly teachers gathered around Him had cause to be astonished. Mary the mother could only ask: “Why?” St. Joseph let her ask the question.
Instead of offering excuses, Jesus forthrightly but respectfully countered her His question: “Why? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” We are not told what Joseph’s reaction was.
Yet, for all of Jesus’ adolescent assertion, which we know caused His parents to be confused, He nonetheless “goes down” from the Temple mount with them. He enters that long period of what we later would call His “hidden life” where He was “obedient to them for some 30 years.
At this point I ask you to use a little imagination to consider what Mary and Joseph might answer to some present-day correspondent interviewing them on the subject of family life, and asking them, “Is it sometimes difficult?”
Their ready answer “Yes, at times” would be followed by their admission, supplied by St. Luke when he wrote that “they did not understand what He said to them.” Jesus was a different kind of child to parent.
Even though there is a vast difference between the Holy Family and our own, the common element is that difficulty that inevitably arises when offspring are offbeat with their parents. Such happenings can usually be worked through successfully when there is a context of love present. That’s the encouraging ingredient of today’s feast. We are right within the Christmas season when Love itself came to earth and entered human history.
One other element that deserves attention in today’s Gospel excerpt: obedience. Sad to say, that is a nearly forgotten concept in today’s world. With all the cultural push for self-referencing and self-conviction that the only true judge of our behavior, is ourselves, who is to obey whom? Who has the right to command? Well, just open your bible and you will have your perfect example in Jesus’ life of obedience to His divine Father.
If an objective analysis of your family yields mixed results in the matter of obedience, don’t be downhearted. Try to think positively; forgive generously; and remember lovingly. A good closing thought: “It takes about five or six years for a tree to produce nuts, but this doesn’t apply to a family tree.”
God love you and your family.
Rev. Peterson’s Reading & Gospel Summary
Reading I: 1 Samuel 1: 20-22, 24-28
With reminders of Sarah’s situation, the story of Hannah is again that of the barren woman once scorned. She also gives her child back to God.
Reading II: 1 John 3: 1-2, 21-24
Being “God’s children now,” urges us to realize that we do not belong to this world, which has rejected Christ. In the next life, we shall see God “as He is.”
The Gospel: Luke 2: 41-52
This selection is a “bridge passage” from the stories of Christ’s childhood to His adult ministry. In it, we see present such concepts as “cross, faith, fatherhood, must, temple and way/journey.”