1st Sunday After Christmas – Year C
December 29, 2024
Gospel Lectionary Text
Luke 2:41-52
2:41 Now every year his parents went to Jerusalem for the festival of the Passover.
2:42 And when he was twelve years old, they went up as usual for the festival.
2:43 When the festival was ended and they started to return, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but his parents did not know it.
2:44 Assuming that he was in the group of travelers, they went a day's journey. Then they started to look for him among their relatives and friends.
2:45 When they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem to search for him.
2:46 After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions.
2:47 And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers.
2:48 When his parents saw him they were astonished; and his mother said to him, "Child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety."
2:49 He said to them, "Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house?"
2:50 But they did not understand what he said to them.
2:51 Then he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them. His mother treasured all these things in her heart.
2:52 And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor.
Context
Welcome to Christmas week. We’ve spent Advent exploring the Waiting Rooms of Christmas: apocalypse, wilderness, the doorstep of the promiseland, and finally, with Mary in her “lowly state.” Each space calls forth the most precious gift — Emmanuel, God with us — who transforms the waiting room, the waiter, and even the waiting itself by His presence.
The magic of Christmas seeps into the most resistant souls precisely because it arrives unobtrusively, with openness and vulnerability, asking nothing in return. Our souls leap almost involuntarily in the presence of the Incarnation. In it, we glimpse our true selves mirrored in the One who greets us with complete delight. In it, we are invited to hold the One who holds us — that is the mystery of this week.
Question
What changes for you if you imagine God as a smiling infant who delights in your presence before you’ve done or said anything at all?
Reflections
Jesus Loses his Family for his Father’s House
By Ron Ruthruff |
I have always thought this to be an awkward Gospel story. Mary and Joseph lose their child and don’t realize it for a whole day! My sister has seven kids and forgot one at the mall once. But, Mary and Joseph only have one child—and they lost him? Talk about free-range parenting!
The Word in the Temple
By Kris Rocke |
We’ve had a week to digest the Nativity Feast. The magic of Christmas finds its way into even the most resistant of souls because it comes so unobtrusively and with such openness, vulnerability, and without the slightest demand. Our souls leap almost involuntarily in the presence of the Incarnation. In it, we see our true…
Praying Eucharistically - Weekly Homily by James Alison:
Understanding the Bible anew through the Mimetic Theory of René Girard.
Poetry
Patient Trust
by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ
Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new.
And yet it is the law of all progress
that it is made by passing through some stages of instability—
and that it may take a very long time.
And so I think it is with you;
your ideas mature gradually—let them grow,
let them shape themselves, without undue haste.
Don’t try to force them on,
as though you could be today what time
(that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on your own good will)
will make of you tomorrow.
Only God could say what this new spirit
gradually forming within you will be.
Give Our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete.
Prayer
Come, Holy Spirit, wild and free. Do as you please. Shine your light on me that I might see things as they are, not as I am. Free me to act in your name with courage, creativity, and compassion.
