Jesus, Where Are You?

By: The Unknown Centurion
In times such as these, times of tribulation, of chaos and confusion, of division and demonization, of isolation and irrationality, and of secularism and sinfulness, many Christians might be tempted to cry out to heaven asking – “Jesus where are you?” Yet, Jesus is not far from us. He came to dwell with us (John 1:14) and remains with us (Matthew 28:20). Jesus is not lost; we are. He has kept His promises. He is where He said He would be. It is we who are lost and, by our priorities and our choices, are far from Him. The answer to our pleas for our hidden Savior and the solution to the problems of our post-Christian culture might, oddly enough, be found in a curious, seemingly misplaced Biblical story from the hidden life of Jesus.

The Finding in the Temple

Was there a reason why St. Luke included in his gospel the story of the Finding in the Temple, the singular event between the infancy of Christ and His public ministry? What to some seems merely an unnecessary reminiscence from the childhood of our Savior, others believe that it must have been preserved in Sacred Scripture for a reason. But what is the reason? Why does the gospel describe an event so embarrassing, where the chaste and obedient Joseph and sinless and selfless Mary actually lost the Son of God for three days? Certainly, it wasn’t to show that Jesus was either a rebellious youth or the hide and seek champion of the Holy Land. Nor was it included to be an instruction that we are to keep a better eye on our children or an indication that the adolescent Christ not only impressed but outshone the most learned leaders of Judea. True, it was a foreshadowing of the three days Jesus remained hidden, from the Crucifixion to the Resurrection, but would that be enough to justify its inclusion?

Remember Mary and Joseph didn’t just find Jesus anywhere – such as within the traveling caravan or somewhere on the streets of Jerusalem. What was significant, and might explain its inclusion in the gospels, is that Jesus was found in the Temple. God required that His People go to the Temple in Jerusalem three times a year.

It seems that perhaps God wanted His people to go on pilgrimage, to suffer inconvenience, and to rely on His Providence, but mostly to celebrate communally.  He did not make this a permanent requirement for His benefit, or because He wants or needs to be worshipped, but for their good, because they need it. For their obedience to His statutes was how they showed their love for Him, over their own fallen and often disordered desires, Their obedience resulted in blessings, but it also kept them safe, set them apart from their pagan neighbors, drew them closer to Him, and enabled them to be holy. Even Mary and Jesus followed these statutes even though they were sinless and did not need to go to Jerusalem or the Temple to offer sacrifices.

Yet it was one of these religious requirements, namely Passover, that was the reason Jesus was in Jerusalem and in the Temple, rather than in Nazareth some ninety miles away. If Joseph and Mary didn’t bring Jesus to Jerusalem, there would have been no Finding in the Temple and no mention of it in the Bible.

Accordingly, the young Jesus would not have shown that God desires more than the mere minimum, more than our seeking Him because we have to, or out of fear of punishment. He wants our all, and for us to seek Him freely and frequently. Jesus showed us without words how we are to put God first, by His spending three extra days in His Father’s House, even at the risk of disobeying, or rather, disappointing His parents, and causing them untold, indescribable sorrow, fear, and anguish. This is the message for us, and the likely reason why the Holy Spirit inspired St. Luke to preserve it for all Christians – that we are to give God our first and our best, freely and fully, not because we are required to, but out of love, despite what others might think, even at the risk of disappointing or disobeying men.

The Temple

Since its construction during the reign of King Solomon, the Temple was the center of right worship for the Israelites. In the Temple alone, the divine presence of God filled it in a tangible and visible way for hundreds of years, only to depart before its sacking by the Babylonians. Then when Jesus was only days old at the Presentation and then again when He was an adolescent, the presence of God after a long absence, again filled the Temple in an, even more, real, but unknown way.  Did this curiously included episode, followed by Jesus’ cleansing of His Father’s House not signify the rightful return of God to His House? Did the Finding in the Temple point to its greater fulfillment in the Age of the Church, where Jesus dwells within every tabernacle of every Catholic Church in every time and every nation, not just in a single Temple in backwater Israel? What Luke was telling us, and Jesus too, is that Jesus wasn’t really lost, He was just hidden, exactly where He belongs, where He was meant to be, where He remains and wants us to be, in His Father’s House.

A House For God

King David wanted to build this house for God. God responded to David’s proposal with a play on words, essentially to the effect – you want to build a house for me, well I’m going to build a house for you, which will be an everlasting kingdom where your descendant who builds it, will reign forever (2 Samuel 7:5-17). Jesus in fulfilling this promise of the Father likewise used a play on words in establishing His everlasting Kingdom upon the rock of St. Peter: “And I tell you, you are Peter (rock), and on this rock, I will build my church, and the powers of death shall not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18).

The dual-use of puns by the Father and the Son punctuated the connection between the two and the establishment of the Church which fulfilled the promise and plan of the Father. If the Temple was the very heart of the Israelite religion and wonder of the Gentile world where God Himself dwelled and sacrifices took place, how much more supernaturally significant are our churches which fulfilled and replaced the Jewish Temple which was completely destroyed forty years after the Crucifixion and never rebuilt? Especially when the New Temple was not built of stone and cedar, but is the very Body of Christ, a divine-human entity, animated by the beating Heart of Jesus and the breath of the Holy Spirit.

Where We Can Find Jesus

Is it not possible or even likely that the Holy Spirit wanted this singular anecdote from the hidden thirty years of Christ’s life included in the Bible just to remind us where we can find Jesus? And that His obedience to the Father is everlasting as is His love for and desire to be with us as a prisoner of love in the humble form of bread. Yet how few people even know that Jesus is truly present, dwelling among us, and far fewer even bother to visit Him? That is why He came into the world and that is what He desires most, to transform us by the sheer power of His divine presence which is available for us to adore and receive. Jesus showed us how we too are to commune with God, adoring and receiving Him frequently, freely, and not out of obligation, not just checking a box and leaving, but remaining in thanksgiving and retaining that level of intimacy and union unavailable elsewhere, before sharing it with others.

Why did you search for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” (Luke 3:49)

Isn’t that the takeaway for us today, from the mouth of Jesus Himself that the place we can always find Him is in His Father’s house? Doesn’t He remain there today, hidden, yet in His glorified Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity, waiting for us to come and find Him in any unlocked Catholic Church? Doesn’t He hope that all who have lost Him, and are far from Him, come to Mass and Adoration to find Him? Doesn’t His sacrifice which saved us still take place there? And don’t His words which are still proclaimed there continue to impress and inspire even the most learned among us? Don’t those who are reunited with Jesus in these Catholic temples of today grow in wisdom and grace, going forth to bring Jesus to others? Isn’t the reason why the formerly Christian culture is seemingly on the brink of destruction because too few people spend time with Jesus in His Father’s House, and too many are searching for Him, or substitutes for Him, in all the wrong places?

Our Churches Are Spiritual Epicenters

In the thousand-year heyday of Christendom, our churches were the social and spiritual centers around which villages, towns, and cities spread,  where people gathered daily to live out authentic Christian lives and to mourn and celebrate together the sad and joyful milestones of life. Today, many are too caught up in the insatiable cycle of comfort and consumption, deceived by demonic distractions and essentially enslaved to empty, earthly attachments, that they never think of Jesus, much less look for Him.

Yet, if even Mary had to go there to find Him, and Jesus used to withdraw from the world to commune with His Father, how much more so do we need to be there, to participate in the Holy Sacrifice and receive the merits, graces, and blessings of the Cross. Whether we realize it or not, our Churches by virtue of the Mass and the ever-presence of Christ on the golden throne of the tabernacle are the spiritual epicenters of our communities.

Many churches were shuttered completely during the pandemic and many remain locked today, which makes the Evil One ecstatic and less restrained.

Now more than ever, when we’re under such constant and complex attacks, we need to seek refuge in these oases of grace and peace, to be renewed and recharged in these spiritual strongholds before going forth to defend what is good and do battle with the Enemy. For it is only here, within the New Temple established by Jesus, that we can receive the Blood of the Lamb which overcomes evil (Rev 12:11).