Scripture Notes: A Missing Boy, Part 2 (Luke 2)

In the last post, we reflected on the twelve-year-old Jesus going missing during a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and Mary and Joseph finding Him in the Temple having a detailed theological discussion with the teachers there. But questions remain: Why does this event happen? What is the significance of it? What does God want to teach us through it?

First, the three days Jesus is missing foreshadow another three days, the three days that Jesus is in the tomb. At that point, Mary’s sorrow and grief reach unknown proportions as she mourns her Son, even knowing that He will rise again. She remembers finding Him in the Temple when He was twelve, for she has kept all these things, pondering them in her heart. He has promised that death will not hold Him, and it does not. She finds Him again, in an even greater way than ever before.

Second, this little incident of the missing Jesus shows us something about what we must do during those times that we wonder if we have lost our Lord. We must look for Him in the Temple. But where is the Temple for us? It is in the Church. It is in the Mass and the Eucharist (where Jesus is really present Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity). It is in the Scriptures (the Word of God in print). It is in the writings of the saints, that great cloud of witnesses. It is in prayer, where we speak to God and listen to Him. And it is in our own hearts, where our Lord is longing to meet us.

Jesus never leaves us. We sometimes leave Him. But He is always seeking us, always loving us, always reaching out to us. All we have to do to find Him is to turn to Him in faith, hope, and love and seek Him in the Temple.

Scripture Notes: A Missing Boy (Luke 2)

Imagine how Mary and Joseph must have felt when they looked around their caravan for twelve-year-old Jesus and realized He was nowhere to be found. Mary herself described the feeling as one of pain and suffering and grief (what the Greek word used here actually means). She and Joseph were distressed and anxious, wondering what had become of their Son.

Three days later, when they finally found Jesus in the Temple, the relief must have washed over them like a wave, but at the same time, they wondered why. Why did Jesus do this? Mary even asked her Son that very question. Jesus response may seem odd to us: “How is it that you sought me? Did you not know that I must be in My Father’s house?”

The first thing we have to realize is that Jesus did not mean any disrespect with those words. He would be the last one, after all, to break the commandment about honoring His father and mother. His point lay elsewhere. Jesus already knew, even at age twelve and probably long before that, that He had a mission. He was on this earth to do something quite specific, and that mission was more important than anything else. He loved Mary and Joseph with a love we cannot even imagine, but His Father’s business would always come first. It had to.

So Jesus remained in the Temple, talking to the teachers, asking questions, listening, and responding. And those teachers were amazed. This foreshadows the amazement of Jesus’ audience years later during His public ministry when they exclaimed that He taught with authority. Jesus already would have taught with authority and deep insight even at twelve years old. While His human mind was still developing, His divine mind was perfect. He understood and expressed far more than many of the teachers in the Temple could or would grasp.

Yet when it was all said and done, Jesus returned to Nazareth with Mary and Joseph and was obedient to them. The time was not right yet for Him to start His mission. And Mary “kept all these things in her heart,” pondering everything in faith, open to her Lord’s will in all things.

Scripture Notes: The Divine Physician (Mark 2)

Jesus had just called Levi (also know as Matthew) the tax collector to follow Him. At those two words, “Follow Me,” something in Levi woke up or became whole or both. He didn’t think twice. He got up, left everything behind, and followed after Jesus, becoming one of the Twelve Apostles. Levi’s whole life changed in an instant. He had been touched and healed by the Divine Physician.

Levi’s first action after his miraculous conversion to a new life was to share his joy with others. He threw a party for his friends, mostly other tax collectors and people the Jews considered sinners. He wanted them to know Jesus and to experience the same healing that had just entered his life. Jesus gladly sat with all of them, eating and conversing and touching who knows how many other hearts.

And the Jewish leaders had a fit. “Why does He eat with tax collectors and sinners?” they asked Jesus’ disciplines. But the disciples did not answer; Jesus, overhearing their indignant question, did. “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick,” Jesus explained. “I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.”

Jesus knew exactly who needed Him the most: those who were suffering, those floundering in sin, those who understood deep down that there was something more for them besides their misery and their separation from God. The leaders, on the other hand, thought they were perfectly fine. They were not sick and sinful, or so they believed. They were righteous...but only in their own eyes. In reality, they were just as sick as those tax collectors and sinners. They needed Jesus just as much, but they didn’t know it and wouldn’t accept it. So they missed out on a life-changing encounter with the Divine Physician.

Scripture Notes: Overconfidence (Matthew 26)

Poor Peter. We all know how he must have felt. He honestly, truly loved Jesus, so when Jesus told the disciples that they would all fall away that very night, the night on which Jesus would be arrested, Peter was horrified. He could not imagine himself doing such a thing. “I will never fall away,” he insisted.  

Jesus knew better. He understood Peter better than Peter understood himself. He could see Peter’s weakness even though Peter could not. So Jesus said, “Truly, I say to you, this very night, before the cock crows, you will deny Me three times.” It was not an accusation; Jesus was not angry. It was simply a statement of fact.

Peter refused to believe it. “Even if I must die with You, I will not deny You,” he firmly maintained. And he meant it. He really was sincere. But he was also overconfident. He did not realize what would face him that night. He did not comprehend the fear and the horror. He did not know himself well enough to properly predict how he would respond.  

But Jesus did. And Peter learned a tough lesson about himself. He did indeed deny Jesus three times that very night, just as Jesus had predicted. But Peter repented. He learned humility through his fall, and he discovered the risks of overconfidence. He also experienced Jesus’ great mercy and forgiveness, and all of this helped him as he assumed his role as leader of the infant Church.