A REFLECTION ON THE MOTHERHOOD OF OUR LADY
“Now
the parents of Jesus went to Jerusalem every year at the solemn feast of
Passover. And when he was twelve years
old, they went up to Jerusalem according to the custom of the feast. And when they had fulfilled the days, as they
returned, the child Jesus remained behind in Jerusalem; and Joseph and his
mother knew it not. But they, supposing
him to have been in the company, went a day’s journey; and they sought him
among their kinsfolk and acquaintances.
And when they found him not, they returned again to Jerusalem, seeking
him.”
The
Fifth Joyful Mystery does not begin well.
It certainly does not begin joyfully.
One can only imagine the shock and then fear when our Lady and St.
Joseph realize they have left their twelve-year-old son behind in Jerusalem. The anguish felt by his Mother is so great
that it ranks as one of her Seven Sorrows, comparable to those she suffered at
Christ’s Passion and Death. It is
another reminder that this life is a mixture of sorrows and joys, and that only
in the next will our joy be complete and truly fulfilled.
Eventually,
they find the Christ Child in the temple of Jerusalem, “sitting in the midst of
the doctors, hearing them, and asking them questions.” Should we ever lose Jesus through sin,
we must seek him out again. “Seek, and
ye shall find.” No matter how far we
have traveled away from God, whether it be three days’ journey or more, we must
turn around, go back, and find him again.
The farther we go in the wrong direction, the less chance we ever have
of finding our way back to him again.
And so it is necessary to turn around, to “con-vert”. We have lost something more precious than
gold or silver, more precious even than the air we breathe. Without Christ in our soul, we are dead. Dead forever.
Instead of being united to our God, we are spiritually dislocated from
him who is the source of all goodness and grace, our first cause and last
end. There is no limit to the anguish we
should feel at this separation.
Christ
will not follow us and drag us back to himself when we leave him behind. He has given us the free will to abandon him
if we so choose. But he wants us to use
that free will to seek him out again, to return to the God we have forsaken by
our sins. And so he waits. Meanwhile, our soul is dead and we have no
hope of resuscitating it ourselves. We
need help. And so God sends his Blessed Mother,
our Blessed Mother, to go looking for us. By remaining faithful to her, even though we
have offended her Son, she will seek us out and bring us home. By clinging to the Rosary and whispering our
anguished “Hail Mary, full of grace, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour
of our death, Amen”, we may be assured still of God’s mercy if we do what is
necessary to find forgiveness.
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