ADOLESCENT IMPATIENCE
Forget the tinselly sentimentality of most depictions of the Holy Family. This Gospel is real life. Anyone who has temporarily lost their child in a crowd knows the stabbing pain of uncertainty and fear. Even more real, and occurring more often, is the adolescent impatience of Jesus: ‘Did you not know I must be about my Father’s business?’
Every parent, bewildered and saddened by the growing up and the growing distance of a son or daughter, knows what Mary and Joseph must have felt.
By the time Mary and Joseph found Jesus, he had found the words to express his unique identity. In this little scene so full of pathos and heartbreak, we hear the first words of Jesus in the Gospels: ‘Did you not know I must be about my Father’s business?’
What was his ‘Father’s business’ which was so engaging for Jesus? To draw every human being into the same family relationship as He enjoys.
But did you note that it is our privilege to celebrate this realisation as a community? Only Jesus can say ‘My Father’. We say ‘Our Father’. We enter into the grace of intimate relationship with God, not as an atomised individual, but as a person within a society of baptised Christians – the Church.
We could take a moment to pray for the integrity which will enable us to express this sense of identity in the unfolding of our lives. We can pray also for those saddened or bewildered by our following of the One who taught us to pray ‘Our Father’.
© Fr Michael Tate; mtate@bigpond.com, www.liturgyhelp.com/calendar/date/2024Dec29/0/RefMiTa