Week three: Getting to know Jesus Christ - Day 4

Finding Jesus in the Temple. Jesus sought for and found. Jesus united with the Father

Prayer to the Holy Spirit 

O Holy Spirit, inspire me. God’s love, engulf me. Holy Mary, my Mother, guide me in the right ways, look at me, and together with Jesus, bless me. Keep me from all evil, from all delusions and all threats. Mary, The Spouse of the Holy Spirit, obtain for me the grace of getting to know Jesus Christ, encountering Him in the mystery of the Finding in the Temple and discovering that the Lord comes to us in the hardest moments of our life and wants us to seek and found Him. He gives meaning to the hardest experiences of our daily life. Amen!

The Word of God 

“Now every year his parents went to Jerusalem for the festival of the Passover. And when he was twelve years old, they went up as usual for the festival. When the festival was ended and they started to return, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but his parents did not know it. Assuming that he was in the group of travelers, they went a day’s journey. Then they started to look for him among their relatives and friends. When they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem to search for him. After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. When his parents saw him they were astonished; and his mother said to him, ‘Child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety.’ He said to them, ‘Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?’But they did not understand what he said to them” (Lk 2:41‒50)

Meditation 

We are again in the Holy City of the Jews: Jerusalem. It’s been 12 years since the birth of the Saviour. It is a festive time of the Passover. The Holy Family comes to this festival to Jerusalem so that they may spend the festival reminding of Exodus—the exit of the Chosen People from Egypt—in the community of other believers. I talked about the Holy Family, yet at the beginning of this evangelical description, we see only Mary and Joseph. They are alone. They are seeking Jesus. It appears that even the Blessed Virgin Mary and Saint Joseph can lose Jesus. The description of seeking and finding the Lord in the Temple shows us that even in the Holy Family, there might be a small “crisis.” After the festival of the Passover, Jesus stays in Jerusalem, and He is found not until three days later. It is fascinating to observe this search for 12-year-old Jesus by Mary and Joseph. St. Luke writes that they found Him after three days. Mary and Joseph are very determined to look for Jesus. They search for Him to find Him. They search until they find Him. And they do! We can learn from Mary and Joseph this attitude of patient and persistent searching for Jesus. Let’s look into the soul of Mary seeking for the Lord. What does the Mother of Jesus feel? Is she nervous? Is she afraid that 12-year-old Jesus may be hurt? Is she uncertain? Surely, she earnestly looks for her Son together with Joseph.

The effort of the Holy Family is rewarded. Jesus is found in the Temple of Jerusalem. But the reaction of the 12-year-old boy to Mary’s reproach: “Child, why have you treated us like this?” (Lk 2:48) is astounding. The Lord replies to this question with another question: “Why were you searching for me?” (Lk 2:49). And He adds: “Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” (Lk 2:49). Fantastic dialogue thanks to which we get to know Jesus. We know that the Son wants to be with the Father.

After years, the Saviour will rejoice in the Holy Spirit and say: “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. Come to me, all you…” (Matt 11:25‒28). We may meditate on the amazing words in which Jesus, the Son, admits to God the Father and declares that He will reveal to us the deepest truth about the Creator. In our Saviour’s prayer, the Creator is first the Father, only then the Lord of the whole universe. In the fourth Gospel, the Lord assures us: “I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant  does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father” (Jn 15:15). These are fantastic words—a crowning of the entire revelation that Jesus brings to the world. The Son of God told us everything about God the Father! EVERYTHING! He didn’t hide anything! Of course, we will get to know God fully in Heaven, as St. Paul wrote: “But, as it is written, ‘What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him’” (1 Cor 2:9) but Jesus gives us here on earth a foretaste of this.

Let’s move back to the Temple of Jerusalem. May we inscribe in our hearts the question that Mary asks Jesus: “Why?” We also have the right to ask it. If we come in our life to a reality that we don’t understand, we can always ask God about everything. Like Mary did. Miriam asks and looks for the depth. Also, we can get to a deeper level and ask not so much about why these hard things happen in our lives but about who the Lord of heaven and earth is. Who is our God? The best prayer doesn’t exclude internal struggle to remain by God and never despair or not leave the Lord. But at the very end, we may confess: “Jesus! You are our Lord! We believe that everything that we experience has the meaning for you!” Therefore, what is essential and key in the text about finding Jesus in the Temple relates to searching—asking about the meaning. Mary seems to say that all the questions bothering and tormenting us (for which there are no answers) should be included in a prayer. Only those things we “go through” during our prayer have the chance to get God’s answer and action. Let’s look at Jesus. The 12-year-old Lord prays in the Temple. Not only talks to the Elders. He is in the space of the Father. This is a Man immersed in God—staying within God’s world. The Son with the Father and in the Father. After 20 years, the apostles will hear from the Lord: “I am not alone because the Father is with me” (Jn 16:32). These amazing words express a perfect bond between the Father and the Son—the Love which is the meaning of the life of the Holy Trinity. This Love is the reason why Jesus—the Son of God and Son of Man—instead of sleeping and resting at night, prays. He talks to the Father God. He establishes with the Father a relationship of LOVE. He always has the time because He loves. Ask Jesus to introduce us to experiencing this LOVE that’s in God.

Let’s take a look at Mary. She hears Jesus’ answer. She doesn’t understand everything. But she carefully treasures all His words in her heart. Let’s ask Mary to introduce us to her experience of seeking and finding Jesus in the Temple of Jerusalem and to help us seek God’s meaning in every, even the most dramatic, human incident.

Spiritual reading 

“My dear Friends of the Cross, make the resolution to suffer any kind of cross without excluding or choosing any: any poverty, injustice, loss, illness, humiliation, contradiction, slander, spiritual dryness, desolation, interior and exterior trials, saying always, ‘My heart is ready, O God, my heart is ready.’ Be prepared, then, to be forsaken by men and angels, and seemingly by God himself; to be persecuted, envied, betrayed, slandered, discredited and abandoned by everyone; to suffer hunger, thirst, poverty, nakedness, exile, imprisonment, the gallows, and all kinds of torture, even though you have done nothing to deserve it.” 

St. Louis de Montfort, Letter to the Friends of the Cross, 54

Homework 

I will entrust to God in prayer all challenging situations that I experience. I will find the courage to ask: “Lord, why?” but I will also add: “Thy will be done.” 

Prayer of consecration 

I am all Yours, and all that I have is Yours, O most loving Christ, through Mary, Your most holy Mother. Amen!