Feast of Holy Family - Homily 3

Homily 3 - 2012

Jesus increased in wisdom and stature and favour with God and with people in general.

 If children eat their muesli for breakfast, there is a fair chance they will grow in stature.  Growing in favour is less defined – a kind of attractiveness, made up of a combination of personal characteristics: liveliness, cheerfulness, considerateness, courtesy, etc.  

And what is wisdom? We usually don't attribute it to children.  It seems to grow out of life experience, and the responses made to that experience.  However we view it, Jesus increased in it.  In fact, he continued to grow in it, to deepen it, right across his life – as he allowed experience to stretch him.  The Epistle to the Hebrews writes of his becoming perfect, at last, through the suffering of his passion and death.

How might we grow in wisdom? Today's Gospel gives us some helpful clues.  Jesus listened to the doctors in the temple.  He learnt the story.  He learnt the facts.  He listened to the sense that other respected people before him had sought to make of that story and those facts. 

But he did not stop there.  He asked them questions.  And questions come from wondering. Wondering can be more than just seeking further facts.  Wondering can also be the search for meaning, for the meaning of past history, but also, and perhaps more importantly, for the meaning of present life experience.  There is a questioning that looks for answers.  But there is a different level of questioning that looks for insight and understanding [both beautiful words!], that is open to mystery and seeks to explore ever further. 

In the search for meaning and the exploration of mystery, the question eventually arises about God.  Suffering can painfully force the question: Why does God … ? or How can God … ? – not unlike Jesus' tormented cry: My God, my God, why have you abandoned me? To these questions there is rarely a satisfying answer, particularly an emotionally satisfying answer.

Behind those questions others lie unrecognised: Who is God? What is God? We all have some sense of God that we bring with us from childhood – and is deeply embedded in our psyche.  Even atheists have their sense of God that to them makes no sense.  So they make the jump and say there is no God.  It might be more helpful were they to face the question: Might their sense of God be wrong? Should they let go of it, and keep wondering, searching, seeking sense – with an open mind? 

If we keep growing in wisdom, we need to lose faith in our childhood sense of God.  Becoming honestly adult means that we also need to lose faith in the view of God that made sense in adolescence and early adulthood.  That can feel quite threatening, unsettling, until deeper insight grows and brings a richer, more adequate sense of the mystery that is God. 

The ancient Greek dramatist, Aeschylus, once wrote: All who learn must suffer, and, even in our sleep, pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God. 

I read a book last year written by a theologian who had formerly been an atheist.  He said that the wise believer could resonate with the anguish of the wise and honest atheist.  St Therese of Lisieux apparently wrestled with the temptation to atheism for months before her agonising death.  But she died resolutely choosing to believe.  Only when we see God face to face will the choice to believe give way to the experience of truly knowing. 

We could well take a leaf from Mary's book.  Luke said of her: She stored up all these things in her heart.  She let life touch her; she took it in; she pondered it in her heart.  She said nothing; but she allowed herself to wonder, and to keep on wondering.  

It seems that her Son took after her.  Right across life, his wisdom grew – deeper and deeper.