Saint Luke, the only Gentile author of the New Testament, and the “historian of Christ’s meekness” (as Dante styles him), narrates several episodes in the life of Jesus that no other evangelist writes of, including the second, fourth, and fifth joyful mysteries of the Rosary, the last two of which occur in Jerusalem: the Presentation and the Finding in the Temple. Both are packed with spiritual food for thought. The Presentation gives the Church the beautiful Canticle of Simeon, the Nunc Dimittis, as well as the Feast of Candlemas; the Finding gives us the Gospel pericope for the Feast of the Holy Family and two wonderful brain-teasers — a pair of “mysteries within a mystery” — thanks to Saint Luke’s silence on a couple of points.
That silence is not a cause of ignorance, but a challenge to study and meditate more.
The first mystery within a mystery: How did the world’s best parents lose their twelve-year-old Son? There are a variety of answers, two of which we will consider. It is the second brain-teaser that interests me more here: Just what did Jesus discuss with the Doctors in the Temple while He was lost?
The Losing in the Temple
To the first question, I have already briefly touched upon one answer in Why Have You Done This To Us?, the key passage of which is emboldened here:
The Incarnate Logos willed this sorrow in common with His Father and the Holy Ghost, and His sacred humanity assented to this divine plan — which means that the human intellect of Our Lord knew of it, His will consented to it completely, and His twelve-year-old human operations carried out all that was necessary to implement it. If the theory is true that Joseph and Mary made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem in a caravan that was divided according to sex, and that, at Jesus’ age, He could have been with either the men or the women, then Jesus carried on in such a way as to allow His Mother to think He was with Saint Joseph and vice versa. (They would have discovered Him missing when the whole caravan met together at some interval on the way.) This would mean that a Divine Person, who can neither deceive nor be deceived, arranged it so that “Joseph most prudent,” and “the most prudent Virgin” — to accord them titles from their respective litanies — both operated under these false impressions.
Abbot Giuseppe Ricciotti posits a similar but broader view of the matter in his masterful Life of Christ:
The Oriental caravan is governed by a singular discipline all its own, with nothing strict or military about it. Everyone obeys the schedule for departure and arrival, but otherwise he is perfectly free. Along the road the party may break up into any number of little groups journeying a certain distance apart and the travelers may shift from one group to another as the fancy moves them. Only in the evening do they all meet again as they reach the stopover for the night. Any boy of twelve, who among the Jews was almost sui juris, shared this easy discipline with his elders and probably enjoyed it much more given the general liveliness of his years, while he knew very well besides how to conduct himself. Thus during the first day’s journey Jesus’ parents thought he was with some other party in the caravan, but when they arrived at the first stopping place and began to look for him among the various groups coming in, they realized he was missing. (Pgs. 262-263; all punctuation, capitalization styles, etc., as in original for all quoted material here, including the Bible.)
The Finding in the Temple
Our Lady and Saint Joseph discovered Him missing while stopping for the night to rest before resuming the return journey to Nazareth. The next day was spent partly in the return to Jerusalem — perhaps at a faster pace, owing to circumstances — and partly in seeking for Jesus. After a fitful night’s sleep, no doubt, they resumed their quest on the third day, successfully finding the Boy in His Father’s terrestrial house of stone. On the third day: a sneak preview, if you will, of the Resurrection.
The whole account is related in Luke 2:41-52, but what I would like to focus on are verses forty-six and forty-seven:
And it came to pass, that, after three days, they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors, hearing them, and asking them questions. And all that heard him were astonished at his wisdom and his answers.
In his magisterial Great Commentary, Cornelius a Lapide cites Euthymius speculating on the topics that were likely discussed by Our Lord and the doctors:
Sitting in the midst of the doctors. A Hebraism, meaning: among the doctors, but in a lowly position like a disciple, in order that He, by his questions, might prompt them to think and inquire about the advent of the Messias, which was now nigh at hand, because the sceptre had departed from Judah and gone over to Herod the foreigner, and the seventy weeks of Daniel and other oracles of the Prophets about the Christ were now fulfilled. It is quite probable that Christ questioned the doctors about the coming of the Messias, so that His manifestation might not be unexpected, so that later on, instead, while preaching and working miracles, He might the more readily be received by them as the Messias, from these same indications which now flashed out like sparks upon them. Thus Euthymius.
What Messianic prophecies would have been discussed? What questions did Our Lord ask, and what questions, in turn, did the doctors ask Him? How did He answer?
In no particular order, I offer the following possibilities in response to Saint Luke’s silent challenge.
The Times of the Messias
The Boy Jesus, I venture a guess, asked the learned men this question: “Masters, what think you of Christ? Are not the times of the Messias almost here? Is it not true that the times foretold by Daniel the Prophet are upon us?” (Daniel 9:24-27). There would have ensued a discussion, more or less involved, concerning how to calculate the seventy weeks of years foretold by Daniel — concerning which, the reader may consult this or this. (Note that Talmudic law prohibits Jews from studying this passage, as the prophecy obviously points to the times of Jesus Christ, which is perhaps why there were so many false christs around that same time. “Cursed be the man who calculates the time of the coming of the Messiah,” say the Rabbis. See Tractate Sanhedrin 97b on Sefaria and this piece written by one of the “Jews for Jesus” explaining how his Orthodox Rabbi refused to discuss this prophecy of Daniel with him because of this Talmudic prohibition.)
David’s Son and Lord
Having discussed the times of the Messias — and the doctors being duly impressed by this twelve-year-old’s knowledge of the Book of Daniel — perhaps Jesus initiated a discussion of the very nature of the Anointed One: “Masters, we are agreed that the times are upon us, but, regarding the Christ, whose son is He?” The answer would have been obvious to all, and they would have responded without hesitation: “The blessed one of God will be the Son of David, as is well known.” But then, a further question, not so easy, might have followed: “How then doth David in spirit call him Lord, saying, ‘The Lord said to my Lord, sit on my right hand, until I make thy enemies thy footstool.’ If David then call him Lord, how is he his son?” (cf. Matt. 22:41 ff., Ps. 109:1).
This question would likely have baffled the learned men. To confirm that the Christ would be David’s son was one thing, but this matter was quite another. Now, because what Our Lord was doing was whetting their appetites, preparing them and those under their tutelage to receive Him later when He will commence His public ministry, it would be rash to assume that Our Lord gave the Jewish teachers a detailed discourse on Chalcedonian Christology. But He may have led them — by asking further artful questions and giving His own answers when asked — to think, if only vaguely, that the Christ would be both divine and human, God and Man, and because of that He could simultaneously be both David’s Lord and David’s Son.
Meek or Magnificent?
What else could they have discussed? The two disparate strains of prophetical texts in the Old Testament may have come up. In Zacharias 9:9, Isaias 53, and Psalm 21 [22] we read of the lowliness, rejection, and sufferings of the Christ. But, in Daniel 7:13-14 and similar passages, the Messias is portrayed as triumphant, coming on “the clouds of heaven” in majesty. The learned men may well have offered their opinion — later codified in the Talmud (Sanhedrin 98a) — that if the Jewish people are found to be worthy, then the Messias will come in majesty; if not, He will come lowly and riding on a donkey. (This may give us an insight into why the chief priests and scribes were so incensed on the occasion of His riding into Jerusalem on a donkey.) What would the doctors in the Temple have said of Isaias 52:13 to 53:12, the fourth “Suffering Servant Song”? Would they have said, as some modern Jewish commentators do, that this applies to the sufferings of the Jewish people and not to the Christ? I don’t know. But, Our Lord’s questions and answers would once more have given them hints that the real solution involves more than the conventional Rabbinical answer: It involves two Messianic comings, the first in lowliness and meekness, the second in glory and majesty. Mercy first, then justice.
Suffering and Glory?
In explaining the sufferings of the Servant of God, the Boy may have gently suggested something regarding the Passion, for it was hinted at in the Old Testament — and more than hinted at if we consider the vividness and detail of Isaias 53, and Psalm 21. For all that, much later in the life of Christ, during His public ministry, the people were confused when He spoke of His Crucifixion (cf. John 12:32-34). Even His intimates did not get it; during His post-Resurrection dialogue with two despondent disciples on their way to Emmaus, Jesus gently rebuked Cleophas and his unnamed companion, “O foolish, and slow of heart to believe in all things which the prophets have spoken. Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and so to enter into his glory?” But Our Lord did not simply content Himself with a rebuke; He unpacked some relevant Old-Testament passages to back it up: “And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded to them in all the scriptures, the things that were concerning him” (Luke 24:25-27). This discourse made their hearts burn within them (v. 32) — a delight the doctors of the Law may also have experienced when Jesus was only twelve years old.
Jews and Gentiles?
One large can of worms Our Lord could have opened — and He did have the better part of three days, mind you, so there was time — is the subject of whether the Messianic Kingdom would have remained a Jewish monopoly or not. Some passages of the Hebrew Scriptures suggest that the Jews will become the masters of the Gentiles (Isaias 60:10-14, Zacharias 14:16-17); others, that the Gentiles will enter the Kingdom of Christ with equal status (Isaias 49:6, Isaias 19:24-25, Malachias 1:11). How delicately Jesus may have broached the loss of a Jewish monopoly is anyone’s guess, but, given what we do know, the violence that erupted when He broached this subject during His public ministry (cf. Luke 4:25-30) did not happen when He was twelve. Nor did He likely speak to the doctors so frankly as He would later, when curing the centurion’s servant (Matt. 8:11-12), or when explaining the Parable of the Wicked Tenants (Matt. 21:33 ff).
Related to this is the temporary character of Mosaic Law, which we know came to its terminus by being fulfilled in the New Covenant, a much better one, that was prophesied in Jeremias 31:31-33.
Minds Blown
These and other Messianic matters could have occupied Jesus and His learned interlocutors during the time Mary and Joseph sought Him sorrowing. When the holy couple did find Him, the doctors may have been in ear shot of something that we know was said, something that would have stunned them, had they probed its depths — namely, this dialogue:
Mary: “Son, why hast thou done so to us? Behold thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing.”
Jesus: “How is it that you sought me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?”
Without slighting the great Saint Joseph, who was the Boy’s father according to the Law of Moses, Jesus spoke of God as His Father, while Mary had in mind Saint Joseph. Here, we see a hint at the two natures — David’s Son and Lord. Moreover, with the revelation to the doctors that these are His parents, there may have been some memory brought back to what happened only twelve years earlier, when this Child was presented in the Temple by these same poor folk from Nazareth. Simeon and Anna were likely not entirely unknown then in these very precincts of the Temple where the doctors held their discussions. Moreover, in the Temple were kept the genealogies, not only of the Aaronic priests, but also of the Davidic lines. Had they checked, likely with the assistance of the Levite in charge of the archives, they could have confirmed that Jesus, though from apparent obscurity, was indeed of the Blood Royal. How much more was recorded of Him in those archives (e.g., that He was from Bethlehem) is not known to me.
Clearly, whatever it was that they discussed and whatever the doctors knew about this Boy, “all who heard Him were amazed.”
Beloved physician, Saint Luke (Col. 4:14) — historian of Christ’s meekness and of Mary’s meditative Heart (Luke 2:19, 2:5) — thank you for your graceful narration and your veiling silence; both help us more deeply to ponder the mysteries of Christ. Pray for us that, with Mary, we may fruitfully keep His words and ponder them in our hearts, not becoming forgetful hearers, but doers of the work of God’s glory and our own sanctification (cf. James 1:25), ever seeking Jesus and finding Him in all things, both here and hereafter. Amen.
