Tridentine Feast of the Holy Family January 2009
The pain of the mother and father suggest their great devotion towards the child, i.e., the devotion of men towards God.
Tropologically: the Blessed Virgin Mary is the soul running through the city looking for the Lover, as foreshadowed in the Song of Songs 1:7 Indica mihi quem diligit anima mea, ubi pascas, ubi cubes in meridie? audit:Egredere, at abi post vestigia gregum, et pasce haedos tuos juxta tabernacula pastorum.
His words asking them why they sought him out could mean:
The words of Christ are instructional, consoling, excusing, defending what was done... as if to say "It was not necessary for you to seek me out, for you could've imagined me negotiating the salvation of the world, for which my heavenly Father sent me, and now I was trying to begin it. You must not always think of me as having to stay next to your side, but for this purpose you must imagine me sometimes having to leave you, as I've just begun to do. Furthermore departing from you without your knowledge as I did, I was attempting to teach you that I must not ultimately depend on you, but upon my heavenly Father, and upon his will and counsel..."
Related Scripture Passages
Song of Solomon 1:7 7 Tell me, you whom my soul loves, where you pasture your flock, where you make it lie down at noon; for why should I be like one who wanders beside the flocks of your companions?
Catechism of the Catholic Church
534
The finding of Jesus in the temple is the only event that breaks the silence of the Gospels about the hidden years of Jesus.226 Here Jesus lets us catch a glimpse of the mystery of his total consecration to a mission that flows from his divine sonship: "Did you not know that I must be about my Father's work?"227 Mary and Joseph did not understand these words, but they accepted them in faith. Mary "kept all these things in her heart" during the years Jesus remained hidden in the silence of an ordinary life.
226 Cf. Lk 2:41-52.
227 Lk 2:49 alt.
Points to Ponder
-- consider this from a vocational standpoint, since we are beginning national vocations week
-- the need for sons and daughters ultimately to ask the Father what He desires for their life
-- the need for sons and daughters ultimately to question the doctors of the Church, the tradition of the Church and converse with it quite personally
-- the need for parents to allow their children to roam to seek the Will of the Father... I recently had a discussion with a vocation director who told me that the will of the parents was one of the obstacles (three great obstacles, i.e., debt, impurity, unwillingness of parents) to people entering the priesthood...
-- consider the pain of Mary, although she was sinless. Pain here is somehow connected to perfect love. Remember the Mass of the Blessed Virgin Mary on Saturday's which says, "The incarnation of your Son deepened the Blessed Virgin's love for you." There is a growth in love that seems sometimes to involve pain. Mary had nothing that was not love within her, but her smallness-full-of-love still could expand. The losing-to-the-temple-and-the-Father's-Will is a foreshadowing of Calvary, where Mary would experience still greater pain because of the Father's Will for her Son.
