The Holy Family plays hide and seek for three days.

Fifth Joyful Mystery

The Finding in the Temple

The Lord Teaches in His Temple, and His Servants Are in Awe of His Wisdom

Luke 2:41-52 Fruit: Piety
The Finding of Jesus in the Temple

After the feast of Passover in Jerusalem, which the Holy Family kept with friends and family from Nazareth, and unbeknownst to the Blessed Virgin Mary and St. Joseph, Jesus went to the Temple and sat among the doctors and lawyers, listening to them and asking and answering questions in turn. They were astounded by His wisdom.

Knowing the whole story, unlike the doctors and lawyers, that is, knowing that Jesus is God, it is unsurprising that they marveled, since God is the fullness of all perfections and is perfectly wise. But I suppose that's a bit of a spoiler for the Judaic doctors and lawyers of the Temple.

🔦 Sought Sorrowing, Found in the Father's House

When Mary and Joseph, each supposing Him with the other, realized Jesus had stayed behind in Jerusalem, they were distraught, as any parent would be at finding their child not among the trusted family and friends they traveled with. So they hurried back and probably set a land speed record for reaching Jerusalem on foot and by donkey. By the time they arrive three days have passed. They surely hoped someone in the Temple had seen Him, and lo and behold, Jesus is in the Temple, His Father's house.

This is the whole heart of the mystery. We can always find Jesus in His Father's house, waiting for us to come to Him.

In every Catholic church is the Tabernacle, and every day of the year, save Holy Saturday, Jesus is there, truly present, waiting for you to come and visit Him. What Mary and Joseph found after three days of sorrow, you can find in any open church this afternoon.

There is a foreshadowing here too: three days of seeking Him sorrowing, and then He is found. The mother who seeks Him now will seek Him again after another three days, and find Him risen.

🌱 The Fruit of the Mystery
Fruit of the Fifth Joyful Mystery
Piety

The fruit of this mystery is piety. If you want to read about what it means to be pious, I will not recommend the Meno, or rather the Euthyphro, where Socrates presses the question of holiness and never lets a clean definition settle; it is a fine dialogue but a dry road to devotion. If instead you want to know piety and to become pious yourself, all you have to do is go be with Our Lord. He is piety itself, and if we imitate Him in all things and become like Him, then He and His Father and the Holy Ghost come to dwell within us, and we become pious.

📿 A Scriptural Rosary for This Mystery

Pray each verse, then the Ave Maria, letting St. Luke's account of the finding carry the decade.

The Fifth Joyful Mystery: Finding Jesus in the Temple
Pater Noster
Luke 2:41-42 And his parents went every year to Jerusalem, at the solemn day of the pasch. And when he was twelve years old, they going up into Jerusalem, according to the custom of the feast,
Ave Maria …
Luke 2:43 And having fulfilled the days, when they returned, the child Jesus remained in Jerusalem; and his parents knew it not.
Ave Maria …
Luke 2:45-46a And not finding him, they returned into Jerusalem, seeking him. And it came to pass, that, after three days, they found him in the temple,
Ave Maria …
Luke 2:46b sitting in the midst of the doctors, hearing them, and asking them questions.
Ave Maria …
Luke 2:47 And all that heard him were astonished at his wisdom and his answers.
Ave Maria …
Luke 2:48 And seeing him, they wondered. And his mother said to him: Son, why hast thou done so to us? behold thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing.
Ave Maria …
Luke 2:49 And he said to them: How is it that you sought me? did you not know, that I must be about my father's business?
Ave Maria …
Luke 2:50 And they understood not the word that he spoke unto them.
Ave Maria …
Luke 2:51 And he went down with them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject to them. And his mother kept all these words in her heart.
Ave Maria …
Luke 2:52 And Jesus advanced in wisdom, and age, and grace with God and men.
Ave Maria …
O My Jesus …
Gloria Patri …
🌅 Closing the Joyful Mysteries

So the Joyful Mysteries close. Across the five, God has been made known: to Mary by an angel, to Elizabeth by the leaping child, to shepherd and scholar at the manger, to Simeon in the Temple, and at last by His own wisdom from His own mouth in His Father's house. The Word who was made flesh in secret has been shown to the world. From the hidden years at Nazareth we now turn toward His public ministry and the light of the Luminous Mysteries.

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