Luke 2:41-52 Homily Notes
-- "Thy father and I have sought the sorrowing".... Mary; "Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business?".... Jesus!
-- Two fatherhood's claimed by two sinless persons... not in competition... no falsehood in either claim... in fact, Jesus goes and submits to Joseph and Mary... (although Jesus is certainly greater than Joseph)... an ordered dovetailing of the two fatherhoods
Young People
-- my remembrance after my father's death, walking along the garage to the backyard, "I guess you will have to be my father now"... okay, but not quite accurate... my heavenly Father had been my Father all the while my earthly dad was alive
-- learn to believe and to hear your heavenly Father in your earthly dad's voice: in his requests and in his love... His love is meant to shape you for/in the Father's love
-- obey your heavenly Father when you obey your earthly dad
-- St. Bede: "For what is the teacher of virtue, unless he fulfilled his duty to his parents?"
-- St. Gregory of Nyssa: "Jesus was obedient to his parents to show that whoever is made perfect by moving forward, before arriving at that end profitably embraces obedience."
-- St. Ambrose: "Surely that subjection is a mark not of weakness but of filial duty."
Husbands/Fathers and Wives/Mothers
-- you need the heavenly Father's presence in your home
-- a tragedy when engaged young couples sotep up to the altar thinking they will satisfy each other's deepest longings. It is not true.
-- Husband/father's must be pouring out their heart to the heavenly Father for wife and children and self... and hearing his words of direction, consolation, etc.
-- wife/mother's must be doing the same
-- heavenly Father's presence should be known
-- to Divine Son comes to you at this altar today to enter you and make you more fully a child of the Father
St. Paul on earthly fatherhood receiving from heavenly: ... Ephesians 3:13-21 13 Wherefore I pray you not to faint at my tribulations for you, which is your glory. 14 For this cause I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, 15 Of whom all paternity in heaven and earth is named, 16 That he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened by his Spirit with might unto the inward man, 17 That Christ may dwell by faith in your hearts; that being rooted and founded in charity, 18 You may be able to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth, and length, and height, and depth: 19 To know also the charity of Christ, which surpasseth all knowledge, that you may be filled unto all the fulness of God. 20 Now to him who is able to do all things more abundantly than we desire or understand, according to the power that worketh in us; 21 To him be glory in the church, and in Christ Jesus unto all generations, world without end. Amen.
Regarding Mary
St. Bede: " Mark the wisest of mothers, Mary the mother of true wisdom, becomes the scholar or disciple of the Child. For she yielded to him not as to a boy, nor as to a man, but as unto God. Further, she pondered upon both His divine words and works, so that nothing that was said or done by Him was lost upon her, but as the Word itself was before in her womb, so now she conceived the ways and words of the same, and in a manner nursed them in her heart. And while indeed she thought upon one thing at the time, another she wanted to be more clearly revealed to her; and this was her constant rule and law through her whole life."
