As this was a Mass for children, the homily was a lot more dialogical than a text can reproduce. They gave good answers!
[What have you
lost? How did you feel when you lost
it? Have you ever found something? That feels pretty good, huh?]
Mary found Jesus! She had lost her son; she had lost the Son of
God! But she found him! Can you imagine the joy! But that joy must have been tinged with a
sobering realization: my little boy’s growing up. He’s getting more independent. He’s a young man. And not just any young man, he’s holding his
own with the teachers in the Temple. He’s
in sixth grade, and he’s holding his own with the teachers in the Temple!
He’s Mary son and he’s
the Son of God, and he must be about his Father’s business, the business of
seeking out the lost, of freeing the world from sin and death. Jesus would go out from her, to the margins
of society, and ultimately, to his early death.
She would have to keep seeking Jesus, sometimes in the most terrible
places, the places that most needed his healing touch. She finds Jesus.
And she helps us find
Jesus. Many of you have the wonderful
gift of praying a rosary daily with one of your teachers. All of you can do that on your own even if
you can’t do it in Church. While beads
[show] are wonderful, you don’t need them to pray the rosary: there’s a reason
God gave you ten fingers. Through this
way of asking Mary to help you as you pass through the mysteries, she’ll help
you find Jesus.
Through praying through
such happy moments as the birth of a child, two cousins visiting with each
other, the resurrection of Jesus: you’ll learn to expect to find Jesus in the
happiest moments of your life, to give thanks and to rejoice with
him. Through praying through busy
moments, like Jesus going village to village preaching, you’ll learn to expect
to find Jesus in your work. Praying
through challenging moments, like the Angel telling Mary she was to have a
child, you’ll learn to expect to find Jesus whenever you’re challenged to take
the next step in your life. Praying with
the hard road to the cross and death that came at its end, you’ll become surer
and surer that when your life gets tough and you feel like no-one’s with you:
Jesus is there too, with you, his arms are out-stretched on the cross in love
of you.
As we meditate on each
of these mysteries, we ask Mary’s help.
We say (say it with me): Hail Mary… In the very centre of that prayer, whose name
do we find? [Jesus]. Our relationship to
Mary, what we say to her, is defined by her link to Jesus. Look at the person on your left… on your
right. Jesus is active in those two
people’s lives. They’re created in the
image of God, and are being redeemed by Jesus’ love. C.S. Lewis said, “Next to the Blessed
Sacrament, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your sight.” Our relationship with each person, not just
with Mary, needs to be defined by their link to Jesus. If we only look with eyes of faith, Mary will
help us find Jesus in each and every person we meet; even in ourselves.
Finding Jesus… What joy
there is in that!
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