Three Days Grace: A Meditation On The Finding Of The Child Jesus In The Temple

 As anyone who undertakes the First Saturday devotion knows, Our Lady asks us to spend an additional fifteen minutes keeping her company while meditating (meditation being "prolonged reasoning with the understanding," according to St. Teresa) on the mysteries of the rosary. I have taken this to mean one can meditate on all five of the Joyful mysteries of that day, or focus on one in particular. I usually opt for the latter, and usually receive some insights by the Holy Spirit during that time that I may not have had otherwise. 

Yesterday (Saturday) I felt led to meditate on the fifth Joyful Mystery, the Finding of the Child Jesus in the Temple. I'm sure none of these insights are novel, as someone more learned than myself may have illuminated them already, but for me it was fruitful.

In Luke's gospel, we see the Holy Family returning home via caravan from Jerusalem after the Passover. They had already gone a day before they realized the twelve year old Jesus was not with them (Lk 2:44). Doubling back, they returned to Jerusalem where the scripture says they "found him after three days" (2:46). 

This in itself comprised the bulk of my meditation. As a parent of a soon-to-be twelve year old boy myself, I would be beside myself. Now twelve year old boys two thousand years ago were probably more self-sufficient than today, and parents probably didn't have as much of the helicopter-like and exhausting vigilance they do today, but I nevertheless tried to put myself in the mind of St. Joseph in particular. 

As protector and provider, what must have been going through his mind: He was the foster father of the Messiah--no pressure or anything! He was the strong, silent type, never saying a word in scripture. What was going through his head? It was probably hard enough feeling that Jesus was not related to him by blood, but adopted, per se. Yes, he was chosen by God to be the husband of the Mother of God, but he was also charged with this responsibility. Did Jesus (who was under his watch) disappearing undermine his own confidence in his ability to carry out this role? What if something happened to the boy? And who do you pray to when the son of God himself is missing? "Jesus, help me find...you?!" Poor St. Joseph!

And poor Mary. If St. Joseph was grieved, the twenty-six year old Mary, who bore the Savior and was closer to him than any person on earth, must have been even more troubled on a purely maternal level. But as my meditation went further into her heart, I witnessed what I felt was a precursor to twenty one years later, when she once again would be separated from her beloved son for an additional three days. Did she know he would rise from the dead, that this was not an end but a test of faith and patient endurance? What were those three days like--both when he was a boy separated from her, and then as a man separated from the land of the living?

As I kept our Lady company, I tried to console her with seemingly empty words I wasn't sure I believed myself "Don't worry my Lady, we'll find him" and "I'm sure he's okay." Like someone trying to comfort a grieving friend when you don't know what to possibly say. She took my hand in hers as if I was the one in need of faith and consoling, and squeezed it gently. I had a vision of Jesus, years later asleep in the stern on a pillow, quietly napping as his disciples thought they were perishing (Mk 4:38). He knew they would not meet their demise. 

But did Mary know Jesus would ever be found again? Was she walking in darkness, while the whereabout of her boy were unknown and also while he lay lifeless as a man in a tomb. When a woman is pregnant, she knows she cannot stay pregnant forever, that the baby will come and it is just a matter of days, weeks, or months. But for Mary in these instances, what if she wasn't sure he would ever be found, or live again? How great that darkness, that silence, that vast ocean black as night! But perhaps God is impregnating us with faith, hope, patience during this desolate incubation.

When we finally find the boy in the Temple sitting among the teachers of the Law, a wave of joy washes over me upon seeing my boy Lord. But also a rush of relief, that this Good Friday ordeal and unbearable tension is finally over. For the past three days, nothing has mattered except WE MUST FIND JESUS, the way nothing matters to a drowning man except air. I'm beside myself; what was lost is now found.

But when I look over at Our Lady, she has a kind of...tiredness. Not annoyance, but a kind of weighty perplexion. In fact, both her and St. Joseph were "astonished," as she says, "Child, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have searching for you in great anxiety" (Lk 2:48). (In the Douay-Rheims translation, they had been searching for the boy "sorrowing." In the RSV, the NASB, the NIV, it was "anxiously" or "in great anxiety")

Now I love St. Francis de Sales and his pragmatic wisdom. But there is one saying of his that I've always struggled with, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. It is this:

"Anxiety is the greatest evil that can befall a soul, except sin. God commands you to pray, but He forbids you to worry." 

As someone who suffers from anxiety clinically, this is a heavy admonition to shoulder. I mean, I don't like it myself, and yet I fall into the worry-trap during stressful situations in which my anxiety gets away from me. To be accused of sin on top of it is even worse. 

But what is often left out when this quote is taken at face-value is in the preceding verse in Introduction To The Devout Life, where St. Francis says this:

"If any one strives to be delivered from his troubles out of love of God, he will strive patiently, gently, humbly and calmly, looking for deliverance rather to God’s Goodness and Providence than to his own industry or efforts; but if self-love is the prevailing object he will grow hot and eager in seeking relief, as though all depended more upon himself than upon God. I do not say that the person thinks so, but he acts eagerly as though he did think it. Then if he does not find what he wants at once, he becomes exceedingly impatient and troubled, which does not mend matters, but on the contrary makes them worse, and so he gets into an unreasonable state of anxiety and distress, till he begins to fancy that there is no cure for his trouble. Thus you see how a disturbance, which was right at the outset, begets anxiety, and anxiety goes on into an excessive distress, which is exceedingly dangerous" (XI).

Does Mary seem like the self-love type? The fretful type? One who rests on her own power and might of will? Not to me she doesn't. And so, her anxiety at not knowing where her son was was experienced as any human mother would experience it, yet buoyed by her supreme trust and confidence in God, not the kind of needless worry or anxiety St. Francis de Sales talks about. Were she not to have responded in the way she did--as if she was a Buddha from another planet, or unconcerned, it would not only undermine her humanity but our confidence in her as well as one we can turn to when we face similar trials. In the same way Christ, because he himself has suffered when tempted is able to help those who are being tempted (Heb 2:18). 

No, the "anxiety" of Mary was not the needless or useless kind that we in our imperfections subject ourselves to when we fall short in trust, faith, and confidence. The Greek term ὀδυνώμενοι used in Luke 2:48 can also be translated as to grieve, to be in agony.  

This is not your run of the mill anxiety, but the anguish of a mother being separated from her beloved son. But what if it was to prepare her for what was to come years later, not a mistake of human negligence but as a component of divine formula? Just as when he was in the tomb, she suffered the grief and agony of his death--not because it should not have happened, but because as someone so closely united to him she was resigned to it and entered full into the grieving and agony of that desolation of separation. She knew she had found her son once, three days after being separated from him; perhaps after his death, then, she knew in the silent, grieving astonishment of her heart that she would see him again.