After they had completed its days, as they were returning,
the boy Jesus remained behind in Jerusalem,
but his parents did not know it.
It might seem suspect to celebrate the feast of the Holy Family with a Gospel reading that seems to suggest an aberration or anomaly in that overall holiness. If we were meant to interpret this reading as Jesus being inconsiderate and inconveniencing his earthly parents it is not likely the Church would have chosen it to demonstrate what a holy family, indeed what the prototypical holy family, ought to be. Certainly there could be some mundane lessons drawn from such a story. Jesus, we might be told, was too preoccupied to consider the inconvenience he caused to his parents. His parents were too preoccupied to notice him missing. The moral then would be for them all to become more aware of one another's needs, demonstrating in their acceptance of the situation adaptability and forgiveness. That would be a fine moral for normal human families. But it would be insufficient to describe the Gospel situation.
“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?”
What Jesus did was not done out of absentmindedness or course carelessness, but rather with full awareness and intention. The Son was not only teaching those in the temple, but also his own earthly father and mother. In this holy family the normal order of a family would need to be expanded to allow for the fact that Jesus himself was no ordinary child. The obedience he owed to his earthly father was always perfectly offered, but it was subsumed under the authority of his Father in heaven. It was therefore right for him to be in the house of that Father even if it meant that Mary and Joseph had to experience worry and confusion.
But they did not understand what he said to them.
The order of the family was in some sense inverted. Joseph was still the head of the household but he and Mary began to learn that there was a sense in which they would need to order their household so that Jesus would be free to follow the will of his Father in heaven. This is the lesson for all of us with our less than holy families as well. We are called to learn, sometimes through difficulty, to make Jesus the center of our lives together. We can no longer simply do our own thing or we will risk losing track of him, thinking him safe somewhere in our caravan.
After three days they found him in the temple
When Jesus is the center of our families it does not mean that we will only experience Hallmark movie moments forever after. It may mean that we will experience perplexity and difficulty that are a preparation for and participation in the three days of the Paschal mystery. It is not simply an uncaring child neglecting his duty that is the cause of this. He is very intentionally giving to us gradually, as we become able to receive it, a share in his own mission.
He went down with them and came to Nazareth,
and was obedient to them;
and his mother kept all these things in her heart.
It was still necessary to honor the old structures of authority within the family even as they took on a new shape. Although though Joseph was the only member of the holy family who was not without sin he was still the head of that household. Mary bore with his faults in virtue of her own unflagging holiness. Even she, though full of grace, still recognized that Jesus had more to teach her, that only with he himself at the center of their family would the whole miraculous story make sense. She therefore allowed herself to be malleable and teachable by the ever surprising life of her son.
Only with Jesus at the center of any family, group, or organization can we experience the peace and harmony described by Saint Paul. Putting Jesus at the center will often mean undergoing our own search to find him in the temple. It will then require that we imitate Mary in treasuring and reflecting on the meaning of that search. It will mean three days of learning to set aside all else so that God alone may reign within our hearts. But after these three days the promise and possibility of renewal for all of our relationships will be so great as to make all of it worthwhile.
And let the peace of Christ control your hearts,
the peace into which you were also called in one body.
And be thankful.
Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly,
as in all wisdom you teach and admonish one another,
singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs
with gratitude in your hearts to God.
When Jesus is at the center of our families we will no longer need to hold anything back for ourselves but will be able to offer the best of what we have to the service of God just as did Hannah. We will be able to live out our own obligations of obedience and honor, no longer as mere duty, but as part of the privilege of returning the love of God who loved us first, love now made particularly and conspicuously manifested within, not just the holy family, but our own families as well.
Blessed are they who dwell in your house, O Lord.
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