My mother used to relate an event that took place when I was a very small child. We were about to cross a busy highway which bordered the property of the private school where my mother taught and our family resided. We were going to visit good friends who owned a pharmacy on the other side of the roadway. Without warning, I broke away from her grip, ran into the roaway, and stood directly in front of a tractor-trailer moving at substantial speed. As my mother yelled frantically at me, I turned and ran back to her just in the nick of time.
I am sure that, at one time or the other, every parent has experienced losing control over a child. Perhaps just in a shop or a busy street. It is a gut-wrenching feeling. In today's pericope (Lk. 2: 41-52), we find Jesus' parents in that very position. The Holy Family had been to the Temple for a piligrim festival. [Three festivals: Pesach (Passover), Shavout (Pentecost), and Sukkoth (Booths), were mandatory for Jews.] After the festival was ended and the family headed home, Mary and Joseph discovered Jesus was missing and they had to turn round and go back to Jerusalem. There they found him inside the Temple, discussing Torah with the scholars! When Mary questioned his thoughtlessness, he replied by saying he had to be in his Father's House, that is, in the Temple. His parents did not understand that analogy. Mary is still "pondering all these things in her heart." We see Jesus had remembered the obligation to make piligrimage and the male obligation to study Torah, but had forgotten his obligation under the Law to be subject to his parents.
In the last sentence of our reading, we encounter all that has been written about the eighteen years between finding Jesus in the Temple and the beginning of his rabbinic ministry. That passage simply tells us that Jesus grew in wisdom, stature, and favour with God and people. Since he is our model, we do well to seek growth in those same areas. Wisdom can grow through religious observance, the sacramental life and education, all of which the Church offers to us. Stature can grow through our commitment to physical health through diet and exercise. And we come into favour with God and people through being the persons we are called to be.
But let's qualify that statement by saying that sometimes being in favour with God collides with being in favour with the public, and vice-versa. Since Christianity became legal in the West 1702 years ago, the Church has sometimes had a formative role in culture, but often has caved into false values asserted by the culture. In 1933, the evangelical Christians in Germany, who came to be called the "Deutsche-Christen," unanimously endorsed Hitler as one who embodied the work of God, agreed to cease the use of the Hebrew Scriptures in worship and study, and openly supported the Nazi regime. In doing so, they committed to militarism, imperialism, bigotry, and unbridled capitalism -- all of which Jesus Christ himself despised. In our time it would seem that much of evangelical Christianity supports these same false principles. We always do well to test our values against those of our Saviour.
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