1 Samuel 1:20-22, 24-28 1 John 3:1-2, 21-24 Luke 2:41-52
A favorite angel makes an annual appearance in countless homes this time of year. People rewatch “It’s a Wonderful Life” to hear Clarence dispense rather considerable wisdom concerning our human condition. Remember when he tells George Bailey,
Strange, isn’t it? Each man’s life touches so many other lives. And when he isn’t around, he leaves an awful hole, doesn’t he?
And Clarence the angel proves as much by giving George a heaven’s eye view of the world.
You’ve been given a great gift, George, a chance to see what the world would be like without you.
But notice that when heaven does meddle—here in the person of the angel Clarence—the assistance given is revelation, not intervention. Heaven does not come to earth to solve our problems. It comes to reveal our worth.
“It’s a Wonderful Life” is the gospel transposed onto celluloid. The message is the same in both. God is faithful. God is here. Trust the God revealed in your daily life. If you live life with faith, you will see the world as it is, governed by a sovereign and loving God. And that is quite different from your otherwise limited perspective.
The gospels never simply relate stories about Jesus. In that regard they are like the movies. The story must have a point, an insight. We are not told how Jesus passed his thirtieth birthday, just as we do not watch two hours of filmed parking lot activity. The criterion for both the gospels and the movies is more than simply what happened.
So here, in St. Luke’s Gospel, we have the only glimpse of Christ between his infancy and his adulthood. A twelve-year-old Jesus—perhaps the same age as Samuel was when God entered his life—goes again to the temple. In fidelity to Israel’s covenant, he has already been presented here as an infant. He will come again as a man, but then it is to die, to be the new and final sacrifice.
It may be that St. Luke intends to prefigure that story of Jesus’ death and resurrection. Here, as in “It’s a Wonderful Life,” the revelatory good news bears down on the meaning of the family itself. Jesus will be Christ to his family even before he becomes Christ to the nations. Notice that the scene and the time of the year parallels his later passion. We’re in Jerusalem. It’s Passover.
As the apostles will experience two decades later, Mary and Joseph witness their boy do what the Messiah has come to do: He teaches. Seated, the ancient sign of teaching authority, he answers the questions of Israel’s sages and poses his own.
Then, having seen the revelation of God that lies in the heart of their family, his parents suffer the same loss of the Lord as the apostles will later experience at his death. Where is their son? What have they done wrong? How have they failed him?
Like St. Luke’s two confused disciples on the road to Emmaus, Mary and Joseph turn back to Jerusalem filled with uncertainty, not understanding what God is doing. Has God’s providence failed them? Is their little family, though shaken, still in God’s hands?
The boy is lost for three days. The man will lie in the tomb for three days. Mother of God that she is, Mary must walk in faith. She already suffers one of the sorrows Simeon predicted, and all she can do is to ask the good Lord to make plain his plan.
Son, why have you done this to us? Your father and I have been looking for you with great anxiety (2:48).
The Lord Jesus responds a bit like the angel Clarence. He reveals something of the life that God sees. He does not deny what Mary has said. These parents have suffered the torments of hell. It’s just not the whole story, not the scene that God sees.
Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house? (2:49).
Mary and Joseph “did not understand what he said to them” (2:50). How could they? Like us, they are creatures, not creator. And like his parents, we are called to be the Lord’s disciples, to surrender in faith to the mystery of God at work in our lives.
Christ has also come to surrender, to embrace the will of his Father in heaven. Just as he had done with Israel’s sages, he now presents himself to the authority of his parents on earth.
He went down with them and came to Nazareth,
and was obedient to them (2:51).
And what can Mary do, what can any disciple do, but ponder the meaning of this revelation? “His mother kept all these things in her heart” (2:51).
If, during the fear and uncertainty of our lives, we do as Mary did, prayerfully ponder what has been revealed in Christ, we will see God’s truth, the deep dignity and design of family life. We will know the mystery St. John preached:
Beloved:
See what love the Father has bestowed on us
that we may be called the children of God.
And so we are (1 Jn 3:1).
Or, as Clarence puts it, “You see George, you really had a wonderful life. Don’t you see what a mistake it would be to throw it away?”
