Coffee With God

Reflection: Luke 2:41-52

On the last Sunday of the calendar year, we celebrate the Feast of the Holy Family. On this feast day, we are offering our own families and all the members on the altar to ask God to bless them and to obtain for them the guidance of the Holy Family. Today’s Gospel describes the fifth joyful mystery in the Rosary prayer. Only St Luke (2:41-50) reports the event of the child Jesus being lost and then found in the temple. They travel around 80-90 km from Nazareth to Jerusalem. We are surprised by the behaviour of Jesus: he stayed in Jerusalem without informing his parents. Has it not occurred to him what anguish he would have caused his parents? And when they found him, Jesus seemed surprised that they got worried. Perhaps we forgot for a moment that what we are looking at is not a chronicle! How is it that they find him after ‘three days’? How is it that they did not seek him in the temple first? Indeed this is a theology text composed of biblical images. Luke wants us to interpret the text in the story correctly. In the story, he never names Mary and Joseph. He always says, ‘the parents’, ‘the father’ and ‘the mother’. And in Jewish culture, the term ‘parents’ or ‘father’ represents the link with tradition. And for an Israelite, the mother is Israel: the one who has begotten her people. We also find this ‘mother’ in other Gospels. In the Gospel of John, Mary is not named. It is said that the mother was present at the foot of the cross, but it does not say Mary is the mother. We must pay attention to this expression. Luke introduces into the narrative these parents as representatives of tradition. The parents look for him, and after three days, they find him in the temple. That three-day search is a clear allusion to another desperate three-day search: that of the women who find him on the third day of Easter. They will seek Jesus in the wrong place, among the dead, defeated, and condemned in history. Instead, the God of surprises surprised everyone by showing that he is alive and has conquered death. While celebrating the feast of the Holy Family of Nazareth in 2013, Pope Francis pointed to the Holy Family as “the example for our families, helping us to become families of love and reconciliation, where there is tenderness, mutual help, and mutual forgiveness. For your reflection Remember the three keywords that Pope Francis suggests for peace and joy in the family: “may I”, “thank you” and “sorry”. When in a family, one realises he has done something wrong and knows how to say “sorry”, in that family, there is peace and joy,” said the pope.