The Memorial of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Saturday, June 17, 2023

Luke 2, 41-51

Each year Jesus’ parents went to Jerusalem for the feast of Passover, and when he was twelve years old, they went up according to festival custom. After they had completed its days, as they were returning, the boy Jesus remained behind in Jerusalem, but his parents did not know it. Thinking that he was in the caravan, they journeyed for a day and looked for him among their relatives and acquaintances, but not finding him, they returned to Jerusalem to look for him. After three days they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions, and all who heard him were astounded at his understanding and his answers. When his parents saw him, they were astonished, and his mother said to him, “Son, why have you done this to us? Your father and I have been looking for you with great anxiety.” And he said to them, “Why were you looking 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. He went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them; and his mother kept all these things in her heart. 

This feast was first celebrated locally in France in 1648 and was instituted for the universal Church in 1805.  It was at first celebrated in February.  As war raged throughout the world during the year 1944, Pope Pius XII dedicated it to the protection of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, moving the feast celebrating it to August 22, the octave day of the Solemnity of Mary’s Assumption into heaven.  In 1969, Paul VI moved the feast to the Saturday following the Feast of the Sacred Heart, and the Feast of the Queenship of Mary from May 31 to August 22 so that it fell on the octave day of the Assumption.  The devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary commemorates the overflowing love of the Blessed Virgin for her Son Jesus and also for us, whom the Lord gave to her as her children while he hung dying on the Cross.

The present Gospel passage was set in the lectionary for this feast because it tells of the love of the Virgin’s heart for her Son, an ongoing love that grew as she thought upon him and his deeds and actions, just as ours will if we do this.

“Each year Jesus’ parents went to Jerusalem for the feast of Passover, and when he was twelve years old.”  St. Luke could have written this verse in another way: When Jesus’ parents went to Jerusalem for the feast of Passover, after he turned twelve.  Luke could safely assume that Theophilus, to whom he was writing, knew that the Jews all went up to Jerusalem at this time so he need not have included the words “each year”.  He does so, however, to emphasize the piety of the Lord’s parents.  They practiced their religion with great devotion and so fostered their Son’s love for his Father in heaven as he grew according to his human nature.  “When he was twelve years old.”  Luke is careful to point out this detail: Jesus is now an adult in the Jewish world.  This allows him, for the first time, to separate himself from his human parents in order to begin the work set for him by his Almighty Father.  Luke will make a similar statement about the Lord’s age at the beginning of his Public Life: “Jesus, when he began his ministry, was about thirty years of age” (Luke 3, 23).  He does so to show that the Lord obeyed the custom of the time, that a man could not begin to teach as a rabbi until he had reached his thirtieth year.  

“After they had completed its days.”  We note the precise information that Luke has, as though coming from the Blessed Virgin herself.  According to the Law, the people would eat unleavened bread for seven days after the Passover and then come together for an assembly to worship God.  The Holy Family, then, stayed in Jerusalem for about a week.  It would be interesting to know if they stopped by Bethlehem as they came or went in order to see members of their extended family who would have still lived there.

“The boy Jesus remained behind in Jerusalem.”  The Greek word translated here as “boy” has a broad range of meanings including “young man”, “son”, “servant”, and “attendant”.  It implies a young man not yet married, for then another word, meaning both “adult man” and “husband” would be used.  “Thinking that he was in the caravan, they journeyed for a day and looked for him among their relatives and acquaintances.”  The men and women traveled in separate caravans, and at the age of twelve Jesus could have walked with either Joseph or Mary.  One of his parents must have sent a message to the other inquiring about Jesus, and then they would have known that Jesus was not among them.  Supposing he was walking with other relatives in the throng, each would have searched through the particular caravans, enlisting others to help them.  It would have been a big job.  But when Jesus was not found, Mary and Joseph dropped out of the crowds and went together back to Jerusalem.  They must have figured that if Jesus was in the city, he would have to be in the Temple courtyard, presumably in the women’s court, the only part of the Temple he had gone into to that time.

“When his parents saw him, they were astonished.”  In verse 47, the people are astonished at the Lord’s knowledge; in verse 48, Mary and Joseph are described as “thunderstruck” (as the Greek word means) at seeing him there, sitting in the midst of a group of teachers.  They might have reacted this way because they saw him “sitting” there, ringed around by the teachers, as though students, in the posture of one who was himself teaching.  The gulf between teacher and student has shrunk dramatically in our times so that teachers often cannot control their students and even fear them.  In ancient times, a teacher was revered by student and public alike.  To be known as the student of a prominent teacher amounted to a mark of honor and a sign of intelligence.  Therefore, the sight of the young, unschooled, Jesus seated as a teacher while holding spellbound older men recognized as teachers must have come as a shock, even given their knowledge of his divine origins.  It was also, for them, the first sign since his Birth and the days following of his divinity.

“Son, why have you done this to us? Your father and I have been looking for you with great anxiety.”  Mary speaks before Joseph can.  She reveals her heart to us in her.  She calls him “child”, according to the Greek, that is, a male child, not so much “son”.  “What did you do thus to us”, literally.  She is not simply asking him the reason for his acting as he had. According to the Greek, it is as though Mary knows that from now on, their relationship with him has changed.  It is a sign of the day when Mary will come to him while he is preaching and he continues preaching without greeting her (cf. Matthew 12, 46-50).  The Greek word translated here as “anxiety” actually means the much stronger “pain” or “torture”, so that Mary was saying, “Child, what have you done thus to us? Your father and I were searching for you, suffering torture.”

“Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?”  Jesus confirms his Mother’s understanding of the change in their relationship with him.  He also answers her address of him as “child” by speaking of choosing to be in his Father’s house than with his human parents.  He is an adult now, not a child, and is free from then on to make his own way in life.  It is a hard blow for any mother to hear, but a much harder one for this Mother, who loved her Son with a love beyond all telling.  The Lord also reminds her and Joseph that they knew this day would come.  According to the Greek, he asks them, “Had you not known that I must be in my Father’s house?”  That is, from the beginning.

“But they did not understand what he said to them.”  They did not understand fully what he said to them, for he spoke to them as an adult and with authority as he would later speak to the crowds.  

“He went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them.”  He could have gone off from Mary and Joseph after that or he could have stayed in Jerusalem, but he went home with them out of his love for them and to show us his humility through his obedience, though he did not owe it.  “And his mother kept all these things in her heart.”  The Greek says, His Mother “kept safe” or “held fast” all these “words” or “sayings”.  She treasured all his Son’s words and actions.  She clung to them tightly throughout her life.  Her keen intellect caught it all and she forgot nothing.  

In understanding something of her love for her Son we can apply the words of the Bride from The Song of Songs to her: “I sat down under his shadow, whom I desired: and his fruit was sweet to my palate.”  She was happily content to be his Handmaid even as he became her Son, and she watched and listened to him, enjoying his fruit, his love for her.