Pope Francis catechesis: The Child Jesus in the Temple

Next, the catechesis prepared for the general audience on Wednesday, suspended for the third consecutive time since he was admitted to the hospital on February 14:

Dear brothers and sisters, good morning!

In this last catechesis dedicated to Jesus’ childhood, we inspired ourselves in the scene in which, at twelve, he stayed in the temple without telling his parents, who sought him anxiously and found him after three days. This story presents a very interesting dialogue between Mary and Jesus, which helps us reflect on the path of the Mother of Jesus, a path that was certainly not easy. In fact, Maria has traveled a spiritual itinerary along which she has advanced in the understanding of her son’s mystery.

Let’s think about the various stages of this path. At the beginning of her pregnancy, Maria visits Isabel and stays with her for three months, until the birth of little Juan. Then, when he is already in the ninth month, due to the census, he goes with Joseph to Bethlehem, where Jesus gives birth. After forty days they go to Jerusalem for the child’s presentation; and then every year they return on pilgrimage to the temple.

But when Jesus was still small, they took refuge in Egypt for a long time to protect him from Herod, and only after the king’s death they settled again in Nazareth. When Jesus, already adult, begins his ministry, Mary is present and is the protagonist at the weddings of Cana; Then he follows “at a distance”, until the last trip to Jerusalem, to passion and death. After the resurrection, Mary remains in Jerusalem, as the mother of the disciples, holding her faith pending the effusion of the Holy Spirit.

In all this path, the Virgin is a pilgrim of hope, in the strong sense that she becomes the “daughter of her son”, her first disciple. Mary brought Jesus to Jesus, hope of humanity: she fed it, made it grow, continued to let himself be captured, the first, by the Word of God. In her, as Benedict XVI said, Mary “is truly at home, leaves her and enters her naturally. She speaks and thinks with the Word of God (…). Thus it is also revealed that her thoughts are in tune with the thoughts of God, that her will is a love with God. By being intimately penetrated by the Word of God, she can become a mother of the Word of the Word of the Word.” This unique communion with the Word of God does not save, however, the effort of a demanding “learning.”

The experience of the loss of Jesus, of twelve years, during the annual pilgrimage to Jerusalem, scares Mary to the point that she becomes a spokesman for Joseph when she reprimands her son: “Son, why have you done this to us? Your father and I, distressed, we were looking for you” (Lc 2,48). Maria and José felt the pain of the parents who lose a child: both believed that Jesus was in the caravan of relatives, but not seeing him for a whole day, they begin the search that will take them to make the trip backwards. Upon returning to the temple, they discover that the one who until recently was for them a child to protect, has suddenly grown, capable of getting involved in discussions about the Scriptures, holding the comparison with the teachers of the law.

Before his mother’s reproach, Jesus responds with disarming simplicity: “Why did they look for me? Didn’t they know that I must take care of my father’s affairs? In his word.

Luke’s childhood stories close, thus, with the last words of Mary, who remember Joseph’s fatherhood to Jesus, and with the first words of Jesus, who recognize how this paternity has its origin in that of her heavenly Father, who recognizes the undisputed primacy.

Dear brothers and sisters, like Mary and Joseph, full of hope, let’s also put on the footsteps of the Lord, who does not allow himself to be locked in our schemes and lets himself be found not so much in a place, but in the response of love to the tender divine fatherhood, a response of love that is the filial life.