Like any mother who has lost track of her child, Mary spoke tenderly to her son: “Your father and I have been looking for you anxiously” (Lk 2:48). Her sweet words echo throughout the ages because she speaks for you and for me. Every human person is on the hunt for Jesus.
All my life I have sought you unknowingly, O Lord. Everyday I have intensely longed for you… but not always by name. I have not always known that everything the human heart longs for is to be found there in your Sacred Heart. Unbeknownst to me, I have looked for happiness vainly among creatures—like a child on a hunt for sunlight, who fails to raise his eyes from the grass and the gravel. If only we could see how beautiful and strong is the Lord Jesus.
What man or woman is there that does not wish to be happy? “Happy are the people whose God is the Lord” (Ps 144:15).
Or, who has never desired inner peace? “He is our peace” (Eph 2:14).
Can anyone help but long for joy? “These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full” (John 15:11).
Many years after Our Lady found Jesus in the Temple, she again anxiously looked for her son on Good Friday. She found him on the via crucis and stayed with him at the foot of the cross. Being pilgrims and travelers, we too will find Jesus on the cross. Our lifelong search for happiness, peace, and joy inevitably takes us to Golgotha.
Lent is a microcosm of our whole life. It is a search for Jesus: We have been looking for you anxiously, O Lord.
Our search for Jesus has brought us to the cusp of Holy Week. It is time to celebrate the Week of Weeks: “All time belongs to him” (Paschal Candle Blessing). It is time to worship the King of Kings: “Every knee shall bow” before him (Phil 2:10). It is time to surrender to the Love of Loves: never was there nor shall there ever be a greater love than that which Jesus had for sinners. The cross stands as the most important moment in the history of the world.
Set out anxiously looking for Jesus—Mary will be your faithful guide. She knows what it feels like to search for him… and she knows how to find him. You will find him in a few days more, but you will have to pick up your eyes from everything here below. You will have to lift your eyes up to the cross.
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Photo by Fr. Lawrence Lew, O.P. (used with permission)
