SUBJECT UNTO THEM

 A SERMON FOR THE FEAST OF THE HOLY FAMILY

The life of Jesus continues today with the story of the Finding of the Christ Child in the Temple, an event we’re all very familiar with as the Fifth Joyful Mystery of the Rosary.  Our Gospel today recounts the details of what happened, and once again, we are filled with awe at the sight of a twelve-year-old boy “sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them, and asking them questions.” These doctors, the Gospel tells us, “were astonished at his understanding and answers.”  We are reminded, from their reaction, that this was no ordinary child. 

Even Jesus’ Mother and St. Joseph are described as being “amazed”, to the point where our Lady asks him point blank for the reason why he had thus dealt with them.  Although we might imagine we detect a note of reproach in her voice, we should not assume that this is the case.  The blessed Mother was undoubtedly aware of the nature of this Child who had been promised to her by the message of an angel.  She knew that the little boy to whom she asked this question was the Son of God.  But it was for this very reason that she asked him, with all humility, to explain his behavior—seemingly rather naughty behavior!

Rather than answer her question directly, he replies with a question of his own.  First, his question: “Wist ye not,” he asks, “Don’t you know, that I must be about my Father’s business.”  With this question, our Lord plants the seed in their head that his mission in life is not to be just the child of St. Joseph, an ordinary child who would grow up to become a carpenter and take over the family business.  His true Father is God the Father, and the whole reason why he has been born into this world is none other than to be about his divine Father’s business, to do God’s will.  Mary and Joseph had no answer to this question, “and they understood not the saying which he spake unto them.”

The Child Jesus recognized that it was impossible for them to understand what he spoke to them as they were incapable of knowing what their Son’s future held.  His apparently naughty behavior by remaining behind in Jerusalem and subjecting them to the agonizing search, was motivated by his earnest intention to prepare them for that future, a future in which he would have to walk his own path and follow God’s authority rather than that of his earthly mother and foster father. 

However, for now, he was still a child, and knew he must act as a child by subjecting to their authority for a time.  Only later, and at the request of his Mother, would he begin his public ministry and work of teaching and healing.  When he changed water into wine at the wedding feast of Cana, let’s remember that it was only because his Mother asked him to intervene.  This request would free up her Son Jesus to become independent of the family nest and begin to walk the path that would take him to his destiny on Calvary.  It enabled him to manifest publicly what he had always been, Jesus, God and Saviour.

Until that wedding feast in Cana, however, Jesus “went down with them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject unto them.”  Think about that short phrase for a moment, “And he was subject unto them.”  St. Bernard of Clairvaux in today’s Office of Matins asks the question, “Who was subject?” “Who was subject?  And to whom?”  He answers his own question: “God to man!  God, I repeat, to whom the Angels are subject, whom the Principalities and Powers do obey, was subject to Mary; and not only to Mary, but to Joseph also, for Mary's sake.”   St. Bernard goes on to exhort us to marvel at this most wondrous subjection of God to his creature man, and asks to choose “which giveth greater wonder, whether it be the most loving humility of the Son, or the exceeding great dignity of his Mother.”  For truly each is marvellous in its own right.    As St. Bernard puts it, “Both amaze us, both are marvellous.  That God should obey a woman is lowliness without parallel, that woman should rule over God, an elevation beyond comparison.”

For us today, this is a great lesson in humility.  For how can we possibly exalt ourselves over our fellow man, thinking ourselves to be better or greater than them, when our Saviour, Christ the Lord, Creator of the universe, should place himself under the authority of those he had created?  Again, St. Bernard sternly admonishes us: “Learn, O man, to obey!” he says.  “Learn, O earth, to be subject!  Learn, O dust, to submit!  Shame on you, ye proud entities of dust and ashes!  God abaseth himself, and dost thou, O creature sprung from the earth, exalt thyself?  God maketh himself subject to man, and dost thou, who art always so eager to lord it over men, set up thyself to lord it over thy Creator?”

Those last words conjure up images of our own time, when these self-exalting creatures of dust and ashes do indeed set themselves up to lord it over their Creator.  They create laws in defiance of God’s laws, unnatural laws that go against the nature of the world God created.  Our world today has the spiritual stench of hell itself, so far is it wrapped in the law of Satan, which is simply to do whatever we want.  Satan’s law is that there is no law.  And yet Christ himself, creator of all, obeyed the laws set down on him by his created human parents.  Who are we to defy God, when God himself became man and obeyed man?

The lesson learned today is one we must forever keep in our hearts as our blessed Lady did.  As Jesus was subject to his parents, so too must we be subject to our Father in heaven and to his laws.  We must subject ourselves to those who have rightful authority over us—our parents, teachers, governors and bishops.  It is only when their commands are sinful or go against the laws of the God who delegated these men over us in the first place, that we have the duty to disobey them.  Otherwise, humility is the key to knowing our place in the hierarchy of authority.  Arrogant notions of independence, that no one can tell me what to do, are the manifestations of pride, our pathetic attempts to assert ourselves over the authority of God and follow in the footsteps of Lucifer, who thought himself greater than God.

If we always seek to do our own will, we will eventually lose sight of God altogether.  But if we seek out the ways of Christ, we, like his parents, will eventually find him, and be astonished and amazed at his wondrous understanding and answers to all our questions and doubts.