Mary, Mother of Sorrows: The Third Sorrow, the loss of Jesus in the Temple

When Mary finds Jesus, she says to Him in effect:  “Don’t you realize that your father and I have been painstakingly searching for you?”  And Jesus retorts: “Didn’t you know that I have to be about my Father’s business.”  Whew! That stung! Tensions must have soared.  What was it like the rest of the way home, I wonder?  What was it like once they arrived back in Nazareth?  Mary’s question:  “Why have you done this to us?” certainly resonates with the irritation any parent would have felt if a son or a daughter would have stayed behind on an outing without telling his/her parents their intention. The anger, guilt and frustration would have lingered after the event  (cf Joyce Rupp, My Sorrows is Your Sorrow, The Crossroad Publishing Company, New York,  1999, p. 78-79).

Mary, we know, pondered the happenings of her life.  Pondering, though, would not  really have cleared the air or released the feelings.  Talking to Elizabeth and/or to her husband Joseph would have relieved some of the pain but not totally.  Only forgiveness does not. She had to forgive Jesus. After the act of forgiveness, she would have been left with the mystery of it all. Soren Kierkegaard, ( 1813-1855), a Danish philosopher,  theologian and religious writer, tells us, life  is a mystery to be lived, not a problem to be solved.  Henry Miller (1891-1980), an American writer, believed  that “until we accept the fact that life itself is founded in mystery, we have learned nothing.” 

All of us, following a tragic or traumatizing event, are left with the mystery of life. We need to surrender to life’s unfathomability and our vulnerability. We also need to ask God to teach us what we need to learn from events that are beyond our finite abilities to understand and/or  ask for the grace of stop trying to figure something out that is shrouded in mystery. That is difficult to do, as each of us has a little bit of Adam and Eve in us, that is, we want to eat the fruit of the tree “in the middle of the garden” so we will “be like gods” on this earth (cf Gen. 3:6).

What helps you handle life’s ambiguities?