Home Study of Medaille

This mystery records the second time Jesus is in Jerusalem. This time Jesus speaks, He reveals himself in Jerusalem at the Temple with the teachers there. God promised He would appear in the Temple.

Father Médaille brings out how Jesus hid himself there, withdrawing from his parents. This is a young twelve year old boy growing in consciousness of his unique calling. He is beginning to experience his "vocation" and he needs to break away from the lovely, felt, sensible consolations of being in the security and presence of his loving parents, Mary and Joseph. In order to serve God with all his being, to love perfectly, Jesus must let go, empty himself of all the consolations of sense, to be free for total service to the Father. Jesus must allow nothing - not even his beloved parents - to hold him back. Later, in his public ministry he will instruct his followers:

"I tell you solemnly, there is no one who has left house, brothers, sisters, father, mother, children or land for my sake and for the sake of the gospel who will not be repaid a hundred times over, houses, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and land - not without persecutions - now in this present time and in the world to come, eternal life."
(Mark 10:28-31)

This is Jesus' first leaving of home at some interior level of attachment. Already at twelve, Jesus is experiencing the radical demands of his mission and what it might cost him in human response. Father Médaille brings this "heart" of Jesus' humanity out beautifully in this contemplation. There is the necessary "weaning from sweet consolations", from the attachments to family and cherished friends. This is charged with deep human anguish and emotion. Even Jesus was touched by it. The loss was felt. There is a recognition and an acceptance of human emotion. "You knew quite well the extreme affliction that your loss was to cause them. You were deeply touched by it. But the designs of your Father made you embrace both the sorrow of your parents and the compassion that you experienced because of it." Here, Father Médaille gives us a lovely scene of the commingling of sorrow and compassionate love.

Just what is the "fire" emerging in Jesus' bones that makes him rise above this tremendous pull of the flesh. It is the all-consuming PASSION for the Father's will. Jesus in the Temple feels with all the fibers of his being: "Here, I am home at last!"

A country boy in the big city, the great capital, and he is absorbed by the sight of the earthly majesty of God his Father and by these first intimations of his task in life. Caught up in this new energy of his emerging "vocation", he forgets his parents and his former lifestyle and all that previously occupied him. There is one solitary preoccupation demanding his whole-hearted attention and being.

We see here, Jesus, an intelligent boy just discovering his unique call in life. This is the way to go. This is the way in which God is to come to his temple. The prophecies are fulfilled in an unexpected way: God appears in a growing child. "You revealed some glimmer of the brilliance of your sovereign wisdom which filled those assembled with astonishment and wonder at your teaching and divine answers." But then, NOW is not the hour for you to go forth into full ministry. There is more quiet preparation and more lived experience in Nazareth before you are to continue to fulfill your destiny. You go home with Mary and Joseph in obedience.

This contemplation on the mystery of Jesus in the Temple brings us to the awareness that in "letting something go" - here, his parents, his felt security - he "finds something" - a burning passion to be about His Father's business. The same spiritual dynamic is possible for all followers of Jesus.

"Lose yourself in Me and you will find yourself." (Matthew 10:37-39)