Undaunted JoySample

My mother-in-law told me that she can’t glance over at a partition in her kitchen without seeing my husband at three or four years old peeking over it at her. He is now nearly fifty years old. Wouldn’t Mary have stories and connections to Jesus in such a way as this? Do we think Jesus and Mary changed the world with resignation? Indifference? Did he not run and squeal as a child? Did she not run after him, scoop him up in her arms with a tickle and a kiss? Did she not marvel at how beautiful this child was becoming? . . .

I think of this when I ponder what Catholics call the “Joyful Mysteries.” These are joyful moments in Mary’s life with Christ. There are five: the annunciation, the visitation with Elizabeth, Christ’s birth, his presentation in the temple, and Jesus’s parents finding him in the temple. It’s this last one that throws me for a loop. The holy family had been traveling for the Passover, and somehow, on their way home, twelve-year-old Jesus was lost. For three days, his parents looked for him. Can you imagine how frantic they must have been? My son walks into a dead zone with no cell coverage on the way home from school, and I freak out. When Joseph and Mary finally found Jesus, he was in the temple, “sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions.”

Mary was wrought with emotion. “Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you.” . . . Jesus responds, “Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?” Scripture says Jesus’s parents still didn’t understand what he was saying to them. But they returned home together as a family, and Jesus was “obedient to them.” . . .

Here is why I think it is a Joyful Mystery. Mary realized she accomplished what she set out to do. She raised a son who could take care of himself, who asked good questions. He was a deep thinker and the type of young man others wanted to be around. Her son had found what he was meant to do.

Mary knew her son well, and now there was joy in seeing others get to know him too. And the joy of seeing the beginning of his vocation unfold.

Prayer

Father, help me see the joy and beauty in Mary's story. Give me opportunities to encourage the children and young people in my life so they grow up following you. Amen.