Was Mary – the Blessed Mother – an irresponsible parent?
Such was the notion I heard expressed on Saturday morn, at our regular weekly scripture study.
There gathered more than a dozen good men (most of them, fathers), with the gracious intent of breaking open the Mass readings for the Feast of the Holy Family. The gospel passage – from Luke – recounted the familiar story of the adolescent Jesus being left behind in the Temple precincts as Mary and Joseph headed home from their annual pilgrimage to Jerusalem.
Surely this was an irresponsible act, one of our good men suggested. No right-thinking fully-engaged parent would ever find her- or himself in such a circumstance – having to circle back ‘round, with the long journey already begun, to locate a lost child. (And an only child, to boot!)
I suspect cultural historians could sift out a different set of circumstances short of parental neglect – perhaps tied to the travel habits of ancient days – to better explain this temporary disruption in the Holy Family’s cohesion. And even as I write, I find myself willing, even eager, to cut Mary a little slack for her role in the whole scenario. “Irresponsible” is not the word I’d choose. I think I’d just go with “parent.”
Having been a parent now for more than 40 years, I know that stuff happens in a family. It happens when the kids are little. It happens when they are fully grown, and fully capable of making their own choices. Stuff happens, and as it happens you come to know the truth of the matter: that “family” can be a tense and complicated reality. “Family” often comes at you like “fog,” impenetrable and confounding.
Just in the past few days, news reports have underscored this reality. One zip code to my north, an adult son – in a schizophrenic rage – murdered his father with a kitchen knife. Two zip codes to the south, a father (fueled by booze) shot his son to death on Christmas Eve. Then last night, I watched with horror and heartbreak a scene from half-a-world away, as a Palestinian Dad carried the tiny body of his six-week-old daughter to her grave once she’d succumbed to wintry cold in war-torn Gaza.
Fact is, you can make every right choice along the way … and still stuff’s gonna happen in your family. A fog will descend.
So what, then, bridges the gap? What closes the space between “broken” and “holy” in a family … or in any situation when you encounter a tense and complicated reality? Most of us aren’t good at this. But with practice, maybe we can get better. And Mary’s example suggests that at least two things are needful, two things for us to try to put into practice: faith and time.
Faith – the notion that we all live in the Father’s house, that God’s got this, even if in the moment we “do not understand” what’s being said to us.
Time – the passing of days, holy days and regular days. Days that turn into weeks, into months, into years and decades. Days ever spent hugging and loving and forgiving and consoling.
And when we look back into the “fog of family” through practiced eyes such as these, may we all be astonished to find – as Mary did – none other than the Holy One there, gently returning our gaze.
Let us pause now…to recall that we are in the presence of the Holy & Merciful One.
IHS
With Us Still 