The prayers of my youth were usually expressions of soft emotion, disconnected from the hard realities of peoples' lives: "May we collect your tears, Oh Jesus, which fall to the earth like precious pearls." The Pope has called us to pray the October rosary as an antidote to the "devil's turbulence" we are experiencing in our own time. Such prayers need to express some grit, it seems to me, if they are to be real.
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Our Father...
This is Rembrandt's etching of the young Christ among the doctors of the law in the Temple. Mary and Joseph have not yet arrived. But when they do, the scene gets testy. The parents are put out at Jesus' disappearance and Jesus says in effect, "Don't you get it?" Of course the parents don't get it. Perhaps in time. Meanwhile, there's an awful lot we don't get. A church worker told me that I should listen to her favorite radio political-commentator guy, "He's a saint," she said. I don't think so. The underpaid, overworked women who change adult diapers in nursing homes are saints.
Hail Mary...
What a bunch! Have you ever seen a more disinterested, bored group of guys? There's even one fellow, (up top on the right), who is sound asleep. St. Thomas More said of his own country, "England would have slept through the Sermon on the Mount." Let's not flatter ourselves. Some are getting the feeling of late that the nation's real religion is the political theatre we find ourselves in.
Hail Mary...
I wonder if when the family got back to Nazareth, Mary said to the relatives, "Well, you won't believe the stunt Jesus pulled when we were on our way back home." And might Jesus (12 years old, right?) have said, "Alright, alright, enough already." God has gotten all mixed up in the proverbial nitty-gritty of human living. We shouldn't try to make it out otherwise. And we're ruined when we lose our sense of humour; maybe especially about religious things.
Hail Mary...
Jesus returned home and he grew. Am I growing? Growing is changing. Some people stopped growing a long time ago. We short- change ourselves when we say we're too old to change. I have a friend with advancing Parkinson's Disease. He tries to golf and box. He goes bowling once a week. He keeps a garden. Not easy. Am I still growing?
Hail Mary...
The young Jesus said to Mary, "Didn't you know I had to be in my Father's house." He wasn't speaking about Joseph. We might wonder if Joseph overheard this and had his feelings hurt? Creating a family is a long hard slog, and sometimes it just doesn't work out. But even when things go badly and seem to be irreconcilable, I can wish everyone happiness and that their lives would be free of suffering. In a nasty, vengeful world, that's a very kind and good wish.
Hail Mary...
Jesus was found back in Jerusalem - the Holy City with a great spiritual light. But bright light makes for deep shadow. Jerusalem's shadow is deep and bitter. The Greek, Armenian and Latin monks who maintain the tomb of Jesus (the Holy Sepulchre) have historically fought so bitterly, they have handed off the church keys to a Muslim for safe keeping. When this awful time of church and state are over, we are going to need a person of great and clean heart to help put us back together, to that more perfect union.
Hail Mary...
The words astonished and astonishment figure prominently in this gospel mystery. Maybe life's hard knocks have kicked awe and wonder out of us. It's sad when a religious person has lost astonishment. It's a sign that God is absent or the person's become numb to God's activity. The poet, Mary Oliver, writes: I don't know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass. How to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed. How to stroll through the fields...
Hail Mary...
This Gospel scene is about many things, but surely one of them is just the simple idea of finding Jesus. "When I was hungry you fed me...naked and you clothed me...sick or in prison and you visited me...whatever you did to the least of my brothers and sisters you did to me." Sounds like finding Jesus to me.
Hail Mary...
Notice, finding Jesus doesn't require a holy building of any kind. "Going to church. Going to church." Some older people say "That's all I heard growing up." But maybe church isn't something we go to nearly so much as the place we go out from. We never seemed to stress that. And go out from - for what?
Hail Mary...
This poor rosary mystery - we get is so confused and make it un-scriptural. Sometimes it's been called The Disputations - as if the young Jesus had been sitting there arguing with the religious leaders. One pre-Mass rosary leader keeps announcing it as, "The Fifth Joyful Mystery: Jesus is Teaching in the Temple." Not at all! The Gospel tells us he "Listened to them and asked them questions." The ordinary human moment is loaded with spiritual content. Do I have an inquiring mind? Who feeds it? "But we have the mind of Christ," St. Paul writes. Do we even really know what that would be like? The possibility might make me tremble.
Hail Mary...
Glory be to the Father...
