Jesus’ parents used to
go each year to Jerusalem for the feast of Passover.
When he
was twelve years old, he had gone up to Jerusalem according to the custom of
the feast, and when the days of the feast were completed and the people were
going away, Jesus remained, the boy in Jerusalem, and his parents did not know.
Thinking
that he was amongst the fellow travelers on the way, they went a day’s journey
and were seeking him out among their relatives and acquaintances. When they did not find him, they turned
around and returned to Jerusalem to search for him.
After
three days, they found him in the Temple, sat in the middle of the teachers,
listening to them and asking them questions.
All those who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his responses.
Upon
seeing him, his parents were astounded and his mother said to him: “My child,
why have you done this to us? Look, your father and I have been seeking you in such grief.”
And he said to them: “Why
did you seek me? Did you not know that
it is necessary for me to be amongst the things of my Father?”
~~
There
was an ad that aired on British television in the run up to last
Christmas. It featured a young boy who
longed for Christmas to come sooner. We
would see him gazing listlessly out of a window as the leaves slowly changed;
we saw him mark off the days with tally marks on his wall; we saw him dress up
in a wizard costume and zap the clock with his wand to try to make it go
faster. Finally, we see him wake up, way
too early for his parents, on Christmas Day morning, eyes a-glimmer with
excitement. He takes a clumsily wrapped
box from under his bed, walks into his parents’ room, and offers it to
them. The caption comes up: “Lewis’s –
for gifts you can’t wait to give.”
Jesus
had nothing but gifts to offer, but he knew how to wait. In Luke and Acts, the two-part story of how
Jesus launches the Church on its mission, journey and gift are intimately
connected. Most of Luke’s gospel is
taken up with Jesus’ final journey to Jerusalem. He goes, teaching and healing as he walks to
the city at the center of his faith to give his life for us. Most of Acts concerns a journey in the
opposite direction: the apostles start in Jerusalem, and through their ministry
and Paul’s, the Gospel goes out from Jerusalem to Judea and Samaria and to the
ends of the earth. Like the first
apostles, as apostolic religious we are also sent out on that journey to spread
the gospel to the ends of the earth. If
you’re impatient to get going on a life of ministry, of crossing borders of
every kind, that can point to a genuine zeal.
But,
you have to wait. You will do ministry
as part of initial formation, you are doing ministry, and that’s a key part of
it, but right now you are waiting.
Initial formation is a time to hurry up and wait.
Jesus
wasn’t ready to go yet. He waited, he
remained in Jerusalem, to sit at the feet of the great teachers in the
Temple. To ponder, to ask questions, to
soak up the marvel of God’s action in the Passover, of God’s presence in the
Temple. Treat yourselves to this kind of
waiting. Jesus will walk with us, but
first he waits with us.
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