Luke 2:41-52
The Boy Jesus at the Temple
41 Every year Jesus’ parents went to Jerusalem for the Festival of the Passover. 42 When he was twelve years old, they went up to the festival, according to the custom. 43 After the festival was over, while his parents were returning home, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but they were unaware of it. 44 Thinking he was in their company, they traveled on for a day. Then they began looking for him among their relatives and friends. 45 When they did not find him, they went back to Jerusalem to look for him. 46 After three days they found him in the temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. 47 Everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers. 48 When his parents saw him, they were astonished. His mother said to him, “Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you.”
49 “Why were you searching for me?” he asked. “Didn't you know I had to be in my Father’s house?” 50 But they did not understand what he was saying to them.
51 Then he went down to Nazareth with them and was obedient to them. But his mother treasured all these things in her heart. 52 And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.
Matthew 18:1-5
1 At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, “Who, then, is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?”
2 He called a little child to him, and placed the child among them. 3 And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. 4 Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. 5 And whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.
1 Corinthians 13:11
Growing from Child to Adult
11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.
John 1:1-3
All Things Are Made Through Jesus
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.
For Jesus, God was always the center of His world...He taught that daily, and makes that very clear throughout the four gospels...And even when He was only twelve years old and a Young Boy, He called God His Father...And He called the Temple of God, His Father's House...And as Jesus was raised by Joseph and Mary, He grew up...And as He grew from being a Boy and became a Man, Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man...
When we are children we talk like children, and we think like children...Children are born naive...Children are also born curious...And they stay naive and curious for many years...Our cares our freer...Anyone, can be our friends...We welcome all and many to be our friends...We can forgive them and love our old friends and new friends in a natural sort of way...And our friends can be from anywhere and our youthful environment and the culture surrounding us means little to us...We do not even know about the community we live in our country until later and it gets taught to us...We no nothing about the society we live in...We just live...In our youngest years, everything is new...We love and do things without much caution or being on guard...We are more humble, and more humbled by the things around us...And in those things we discover around us, we can almost feel and see a glory in the sky as we go about our days...Anything seems possible...And at the very young age, we do not care about being first and being the greatest -we hardly know what that even means...Childhood can be the greatest of times...
It seems a parent's goal is to raise responsible, healthy, happy, and young adults you can take care of themselves...Children learn much from their parents...They are their role models...So children need their parents completely the first few years of their lives and by their mid-teens they need them less and less as the children grow up...We grow from complete dependence on our parents, to being independent from them...
In our teens we start to grow up and mature...The naive curious world, changes...It seems more competitive...Comparisons start being made...The world loses its naivete and changes from when we were little children and seems less carefree...People fight, there are wars, and it seems we become more critical...Young people have turned into older people and have changed and are different...Country and community have become very important to us now...I am now more cautious...I have become independent...We have put our childish ways behind us, and have become adult men and women...The daily feeling of glory in the air seems to have drifted away for me...We seem to compete more with people...We sometimes compare ourselves more with people, for no particular reason, and say it would be nice if I were like that, it would be nice if I could do that like him, or say that I thank God that I am not like that person...
As St. Paul explains growing up in his letter to the Corinthians, the process just happens, we are children one day and the next thing we know we have put our childhood ways behind us, and then we have become adults...And the process of growing up, especially when we are older and are looking back on it, has went by so quickly...And the process of growing up from a child and becoming an adult is part of the living process...It is a part of being alive...We grow up and put our childhood ways behind us, and try our best to become responsible, healthy, happy, self-sufficient adults...And when we become a part of adulthood, we now have become a part of the culture that surrounds us...That once non-important environment and culture seems to become a lot more important to me, when it once meant nothing...It now has grown in importance...I have grown up...There is not much one can do about their growing up from a young boy or girl to an adult...
Jesus knows all this about life...It happened to Him...He was Mary's Baby, and then her Young Child, and then He became an Adult...The growing up process happened to Him...He became a Traveling Minister, when He grew up...A self-taught Rabbi...And He knew all these things because all things are created through Him...So He knows the process of baby to man, because it happened to Him, and He is as much responsible for us growing older than anyone...But is He responsible for us losing this splendor and glory of our youthful days?...By His teaching that those who are greatest in the kingdom of heaven are those who can somehow change back and be reborn of sorts, and become like little children again -makes one question about us losing the curious and naive splendor of the day...He may not have caused our loss of our naivete and our curiosity ..Maybe we cause that...He says, we will never enter the kingdom of heaven, unless we have the hearts like the happy curious, humble, naive child...Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven...And whoever welcomes one such child in My name welcomes Me...
God was the center of the world when Jesus was a child, and He is the center of His world now...In the wisdom of Jesus, we must learn and realize that there is a need to be humble and the need to treat all neighbors as friends, not only when we are young but at all ages...May we learn from Them...And let the Son and the Father forever be our Role Models...
And so, there is this paradox in growing up...Growing up happens, yet we are to remain forever young in our hearts to make it to heaven...So we constantly must remind ourselves to remain young at heart and like children...Jesus teaches unless we change and become like little children, we will never enter the kingdom of heaven...