The First Sunday After Epiphany (January 10, 2021)

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be alway acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

And his mother kept all these things in her heart.

The Gospel for the first Sunday after Epiphany is always the story of the adolescent Christ getting separated from Mary and Joseph because he was in the Temple when they left the city fo Jerusalem. It is the only story about Christ’s childhood after the visitation of the Magi. We’re told that the Holy Family travelled together to Jersualem for the Passover, showing their observance of the Law. In fact, given that it was only a requirement for the men, we’re shown a little of the piety of Mary. Jesus would have travelled with them because he was about to become a man. In Judaism, this was considered becoming a “Son of the Covenant” (today recognized by the bar mitzvah). It was customary to bring a boy about Jesus’ age on the pilgrimage as a way to teach them. When the Passover festivities concluded, we are told that the family journeyed back for a day because they realized Jesus wasn’t with them. Mary and Joseph were not especially careless; they just presumed Jesus was in their caravan until they had travelled a ways. So they made the day’s journey back to Jerusalem and searched for him. On the third day they found him (a foreshadowing of our Lord’s time in the grave). And where was he? In the Temple engaging in a discussion with the teachers of the Law, amazing them with his knowledge and wisdom. Mary asks him a question I think most parents would: “Why have you treated us so?” In response, Jesus is not disrespectful but he provides a reminder of his Divine Sonship and mission: “Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” But Luke wants to remind us that Jesus is not only divine; he’s also human. So he ends this passage with an affirmation of Christ’s humanity: as the Son, he still obeyed his parents and increased in wisdom and knowledge.

There is a long tradition in the Church to understand the Second Person of the Trinity as Wisdom. The Church Father’s frequently read Proverbs 8, a passage where Wisdom is personified, to be about Christ:

Happy is the man who listens to me,

watching daily at my gates,

waiting beside my doors.

For he who finds me finds life

and obtains favor from the Lord;

but he who misses me injures himself;

all who hate me love death.

This Wisdom, we are told was active in the Creation of the world:

When he established the heavens, I was there,

when he drew a circle on the face of the deep,

when he made firm the skies above,

when he established the fountains of the deep,

when he assigned to the sea its limit,

so that the waters might not transgress his command,

when he marked out the foundations of the earth,

then I was beside him, like a master workman;

and I was daily his delight,

rejoicing before him always.

St. John does in the opening of his Gospel: “all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.” The reading today unites Jesus as Wisdom and Jesus as the Son: Jesus is shown to be wise in the Temple because he is Wisdom, and therefore, we can verify his claim that he is the Son of the Divine Father. The same Word who created the world is the same Word who stands enfleshed in the Temple, the son of Mary.

And why? Why did the Word come? The answer has to be found in that original creation: before they sinned, Adam and Eve had robust communion with Wisdom. And that relationship provided them with knowledge of God, knowledge of his creation, and knowledge of themselves. All three things are necessary: we have to know who we are in relation to our Creator, to other creatures, and to one’s own self. With that proper knowledge, we can see clear enough to serve God properly. But Adam and Eve were deceived by the devil. They allowed him to twist God’s words and create the discord and doubt which led to the first sin. In sinning, our primeval parents gave into vice. And vice has a way of darkening our understanding; in the throes of sin, we are unable to see clearly. And when we don’t see clearly, it’s all the easier to sin. This is what we saw in the past few weeks with King Herod: he idolized political power which produced a paranoia that led him to committing horrendous actions which never actually assuaged his paranoia, encouraging it more and more (a cycle Jesus shows us how to break to in the Garden when he instructs St. Peter to put down his weapon because “he who lives by the sword dies by the sword). Because we sin, we owe God a debt but we can’t pay that debt because it requires a perfect obedience we can’t give.

It’s here that the Incarnation of Christ at the First Christmas is so important. The Word, the Son of God, Wisdom took a human soul and body. In so doing, he healed the wounds inflicted on us by sin and in dying made it possible for us to have union with God. Because his human soul and body were united to the divine, the fullness of Wisdom dwelt in him (which explains the display our Lord put on in the Temple). And it should be said that Christ’s divinity doesn’t overpower his humanity or vice-versa, as we see Jesus obeys his parents, he still grows in a kind of experiential knowledge.

The story of Jesus in the Temple is, literarily, meant to preview another story later in the Gospel: the Road to Emmaus. Three days after Christ’s death, two unnamed disciples were walking on the road when Jesus, who they didn’t recognize, joined them and showed to them how all things in the Scriptures were fulfilled in Christ. Then he broke bread with them (which is Eucharistic language) and they realized that it was the resurrected Christ. Both that story and this one from today’s reading shows us that Christ is often not where we expect him to be. In this regard, the Blessed Virgin Mary and St. Joseph are models for us because they so desperately search for him. Even though Mary didn’t seem to fully grasp why Jesus was in the Temple, “she kept all these things in her heart.” We will not likely fully understand God; if we think we do, it might be an idol we’re worshipping. So our seeking him is never just an event but a perpetual process whereby we are taken further up and further in to the divine mysteries of our faith which we should keep in our hearts.

Pursuing God isn’t a purely intellectual exercise; it involves our whole being. Do you want to know God better? Make your confession regularly. Receive the sacraments. Read the Scriptures. These aren’t entries in a “to-do list” to check off the boxes but a recognition that in each, God imparts to us a grace that helps us, like Mary, Joseph, and the disciples, to see him more clearly. By encountering the light of Christ, we see more clearly as our ignorance is dispelled and we are able to pursue virtue further; and as we attain that virtue, we can begin to see more clearly.

O Lord, grant that we may percieve and know what things we ought to do and have the grace and power to fulfill the same. Does not wisdom call, and does not understanding raise her voice? “To you, O people, I call, and my cry is to all that live. O simple ones, learn prudence; acquire intelligence, you who lack it. Hear, for I will speak noble things, and from my lips will come what is right; for my mouth will utter truth…All the words of my mouth are righteous; there is nothing twisted or crooked in them.”

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen .