"I MUST BE IN MY FATHER'S HOUSE."

Feast of the Holy Family. 1 John 3:1-2, 21-24; Luke 2:41-52.

AIM: To present the story of the boy Jesus in the Temple, and his return to Nazareth, as a model for our lives.

How much do we know about Jesus= childhood and youth? Apart from the story we have just heard in the gospel, nothing. He drops completely from view from the age of twelve until his baptism by his cousin, John, when B according to Luke=s gospel B Jesus was Aabout thirty years old@ (Luke 3:23). Three things in today=s gospel deserve consideration: Jesus= words to his parents; his return to Nazareth; and his mother=s reaction.

1.       ADid you not know that I must be in my Father=s house?@ Jesus asks his worried parents, worn out from a frantic three-day search for their twelve-year-old son. The question is Jesus= first recorded utterance in Luke=s gospel. He speaks the words in the building which, for all believing Jews of that day, including Jesus himself, was the earthly dwelling place of God. The Temple at Jerusalem was the most sacred shrine of the people God had chosen to be especially his own.

With Jesus= coming, however, God was creating a new dwelling place on earth: not a building of wood and stone, but the living flesh of the twelve-year-old boy who stood in that building and spoke of his need to be Ain my Father=s house.@  Later, at the beginning of his public ministry, Jesus would stand in the Temple again to prophesy its destruction and its raising up again Ain three days.@  (John 2:18) That prophecy was a scandal to Jesus= devout countrymen. Even his friends did not understand what Jesus was talking about until after his resurrection. Then, John tells us, they recalled the Master=s words and realized that he had been talking about Athe temple of his body@ (John 2:19-22).

Because Jesus is himself God=s temple, the dwelling place of God on earth, only one thing mattered for him: doing his Father=s will. How did Jesus come to recognize his unique status as God=s Son and earthly dwelling place? We do not know. Today=s gospel indicates, however, that he came to this recognition gradually. It says that he asked questions of the teachers in the Temple. Clearly he did not come into the world knowing all the answers. Like every other human child, Jesus had to learn. His humanity was no mere disguise. It was real. Like every one of us, Jesus learned things as he grew and developed. The wording of Jesus= question to his parents in our gospel indicates, however, that even at age twelve, he had at least an inkling that his relationship to God was unique. He does not speak, as he would later teach his followers to do in his model prayer, of AOur Father.@ He says instead, AI must be in my Father=s house.@ Here is what Pope Benedict says in his new book about the infancy narratives about this exchange between mother and son:

Jesus’ reply to his mother’s question is astounding: How so? You were looking for me? Did you not know where a child must be? That he must be in his father’s house, literally ‘in the things of  the Father, Jesus tells his parents: I am in the very place where I belong – with the Father, in his house. There are two principal elements to note in this reply. Mary had said: ‘Your father and I have been looking for you anxiously.’ Jesus corrects her: I am with my father. My father is not Joseph, but another – God himself. It is to him that I belong, and her I am with him. Could Jesus’ divine sonship be presented any more clearly? (p. 123f)

2.       This flash of youthful insight (if that is what it was) is immediately followed, however, by what looks like an anticlimax. Instead of remaining in his Father=s house at Jerusalem, Jesus returns to Nazareth with Mary and Joseph, to resume the normal life of a Jewish boy of his day. The great moment passes. Jesus surprises us.  He would continue to surprise people throughout his earthly life. He remains the master of surprise today.

Even to his closest friends Jesus was always something of a mystery. The gospels speak repeatedly of their failure to understand him. Jesus= friends began really to comprehend who he was, and what his life meant, only after the greatest of all his surprises: the empty tomb of Easter morning.

3.       One of those surprised by Jesus, and unable to understand him, was his own mother. Today=s gospel tells us that she and Joseph Adid not understand@ their son=s words about having to be Ain my Father=s house.@ Starting with the message from the angel Gabriel, that she was to be the mother of God=s Son, Mary received many messages about him: from the shepherds, recounting what the angels had told them; from those mysterious Awise men from the East@; from the prophecies of Simeon and Anna about her infant Son in this same Jerusalem Temple; from her husband=s dream warning of danger to their child and the need to flee to Egypt.

Despite all these messages, however, Mary would never fully understand her Son. Even for the woman who was closer to Jesus than anyone else on earth, Jesus remained shrouded in mystery. Like every human being before and since, Mary had to walk by faith, not by sight.

We must do the same. On this Sunday after Christmas, the last in 2012, the old year is almost gone. In a few hours we shall cross the threshold of a new year.  What will it bring? We cannot know. Conceivably the year of grace 2013 could bring us some great experience B deeper insight, perhaps, into life=s meaning, or into God=s special purpose for the one life he has given us B something comparable to the insight given to the twelve-year-old Jesus in the Jerusalem Temple about the meaning and purpose of his life. If so, the experience will pass: for us, as it did for Jesus.

Jesus= brief moment of bright vision in the Temple was followed by the years of hidden labor in the carpenter=s shop at Nazareth. And it was there, in accepting the burdens, duties, and frustrations of a very ordinary and outwardly uninteresting life, that Jesus Aadvanced in wisdom and age and favor before God and man,@ as Luke tells us at the end of today=s gospel.

Do you want to advance, as Jesus did? Which of us does not? We advance in age whether we wish it or not. Advancing in wisdom and favor before God and others, however, is not automatic. To do that we must do what Jesus did. We must be willing to let go of life=s great experiences, no matter how beautiful they may be.  We must accept the challenges, the duties, and the burdens which each day brings us. Never look back. Christmas is past. Look forward. The late Archbishop Fulton Sheen used to say: AThere are no plains in the spiritual life; either we are going up, or we are going down.@ He was right. 

Advancing in wisdom and favor before God and others means, above all, taking to heart the words of St. John in our second reading: AGod=s commandment is this: we should believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another just as he commanded us. Those who keep his commandments remain in him, and he in them. And the way we know that he remains in us is from the Spirit he gave us.@