Today we celebrate the Feast of the Holy Family. Our Gospel for this Feast, which marks the end of Saint Luke’s Infancy Narrative, is an episode unique to this Gospel.
Our Gospel tells of the time when Jesus was a boy of twelve and traveled with his family from Galilee to Jerusalem to celebrate Passover. His age is notable because, among Jewish people, thirteen is the age when a male is reckoned to be a man, when he takes responsibility for himself before God.
Mentioned in the Mishnah and Talmud, written centuries before Christ, a young man turning thirteen marks the occasion by becoming bar mitzvah. Bar is a Babylonian Aramaic word, dating from that exile (ben in Hebrew), meaning “son.” Mitzvah is Hebrew for “law” or “commandment.” Hence, by becoming bar mitzvah, he becomes “son of the Law.”
His age makes what Jesus does remarkable because he is not yet considered bar mitzvah. Yet, he is found, in rabbinical fashion, asking questions, listening, and asking more questions. Among us Gentiles, we call this the Socratic method, which is mystagogical as opposed to didactic. Being largely didactic, lacking in mystagogy, is why our catechesis isn’t as effective as it needs to be. Mere information can’t save you.
We’ve all heard the stories of the child left at the gas station or rest stop during a long road trip. Hence, it’s easy to imagine Mary and Joseph’s anxiety once they realize Jesus is missing from their group. It took them four days to find Him. Unlike a panicked child abandoned at the gas station while using the restroom, Jesus was not the least bit worried or concerned. He was at home in His Father's house.
It’s wonderful that the fruit of the Fifth Joyful Mystery of the Holy Rosary- Finding Jesus in the Temple- is the joy of finding Jesus. To find Jesus is an experience unlike any other. It is lifechanging. It brings about a profound change, a conversion. Conversion is required even if you were raised in the faith. Speaking of families, while it is of the utmost importance to hand the faith on to children, God has no grandchildren, only children.
Pope Benedict XVI wrote: “Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction.”1 Faith is an experience, an encounter with a Person. Faith is the joy of finding Jesus!
You’re not a Christian by virtue of being Italian, Argentinean, Irish, Polish, French, etc. Sentimentality is easily mistaken for faith. As Saint Paul insisted, “no one can say ‘Jesus is Lord,’ except by the holy Spirit.”2 Being a supernatural virtue, faith is a gift from God.
Der_zwölfjährige Jesus im Tempel, by Max Liebermann, ca. 1879
You can’t give another person faith. Sometimes parental efforts are frustrated by trying too hard, sometimes having the opposite of the intended effect. You can, however, live in such a way as to make your faith credible.
Since faith without works is dead, to have faith means bearing good fruit by performing good deeds.3 In our day, faith really comes to the fore in how one deals with life’s disappointments, even with its devastation. As so many saints show us, it is important to experience the joy of finding Jesus in your sorrows.
It’s not uncommon when going through a difficult time to wonder and even ask out loud- “God, where are you?” It’s easy to say, “What have I done to deserve this?”, seeing circumstances as God’s punishment. Christ, through the power of the Holy Spirit, always says, “I am right here.” Let’s not forget that weird word Paraclete, which is Greek and refers to an advocate who comes alongside you. The Lord accompanies you through the valley of the shadow of death.4
“Disciple” comes from the word “discipline.” Hence, a disciple is a person who practices the disciplines of a Master, like an apprentice. It isn’t just hard to be like Jesus, it’s impossible without God’s grace. But the Lord does teach disciplines: prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. These spiritual practices aren’t only meant for Lent.
Our reading from 1 John encourages us, as Christians, to be bar mitzvah- bat mitzvah, bat meaning “daughter,” for the women. Through baptism, which is the result of faith, or at least should be, we are children, not of the Law, but of God through Christ. Just as faith without works is dead, a good child is an obedient child. Therefore, to follow Jesus is to be about the Father’s business, which is reconciling the world to Himself through Christ. Christ, in turn, does this through the Church, the family of God, composed as it is of God’s children.
Through experience, through the circumstances of your life, your faith needs to mature and grow in order to flourish. According to the inspired author of 1 John, you can only be confident that God will give whatever you ask because you “keep his commandments and do what pleases him.”5 This is not transactional: do what I am supposed to do and God will do what I want Him to do. No!
Doing what pleases God can only be done for love of God. This changes what you want and so changes how you pray and what you pray for. It is those “who keep his commandments,” scripture teaches, who “remain in him, and he in them.”6
Being a Christian, to borrow the title of a book written years ago by Eugene Peterson, is A Long Obedience in the Same Direction. Keeping in mind that in Luke, Jesus only goes to the holy city one other time, consider the path He trod from that Passover trip to Jerusalem at age 12 to the journey there for Passover about twenty years later.
1 Pope Benedict XVI. Encyclical Letter Deus Caritas Est [God is Love], sec. 1.↩
2 1 Corinthians 12:3.↩
3 James 2:17.↩
4 Psalm 23:4.↩
5 1 John 3:22.↩
6 1 John 3:24.↩
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