Luke 2:43

Luke 2:43

When they had fulfilled the days

The gospel of the Childhood

We notice in the Child Jesus--

1.

A holy disposition. It was this which led His mother to bring Him with her to the Temple, and which led Him to tarry there after His mother had gone away. A holy disposition is the source and fountain of all goodness:

the soft wax out of which is moulded the image of love, purity, obedience James 3:17).

2. A love for God’s house. He loved the Temple far better than the forum or market-place. He willingly remained in the house of His heavenly Father--the attribute of a good Son.

3. A desire for holy conversation. He was found not playing with other boys; not engaged in idle sports: but conversing with the old men in the Temple; listening to words of soberness, truth, and wisdom.

4. A deep sense of spiritual relationship. Loving and obedient as He was to His earthly parents, yet He placed His spiritual Father before them. As says Augustine, He loved the Creator before the generator.

5. A loving reverence towards His parents. He was subject to them. Who? To whom? God to man. Humility seen in its highest power. CONCLUSION: The child is ever the father of the man. Let us take care to form and fashion the child-minds committed to our keeping after this glorious and pure model. (William of Auvergne.)

Filial obedience

Our Lord furnishes us with a striking example of filial obedience. He was true God, the Creator and Lord of all; yet He submits Himself to His mother after the flesh, and to His foster-father also, for our imitation. From His holy example let children learn, in relation to their parents--

1. To love them honestly, sincerely, devotedly; to repay them somewhat for the great love which their parents have expended upon themselves.

2. To answer them respectfully.

3. To render them honest obedience. (Ephesians 6:1-2; Colossians 3:20.) The disobedient child makes the sinful man.

4. To succour them in need. It is dreadful ingratitude to do nothing for those who have done so much for us. Our blessed Lord had a care for His mother even on the cross. A noble Roman lady ministered of her breast to her mother in prison. Remember, finally, that filial love ever commands a blessing. (J. Clichtove.)

Revelation of perfect child-life

The life of the child is threefold. It is lived not in the world; it is the life of home, and church, and school. Think of Jesus in His child-life as a pattern for Christian children.

I. HOME LIFE.

1. Obedience to parents. This is a prime principle in home life--the germ of all other obedience, social and national A habit of life which is needful, in order that we may be led to obedience to Christ.

2. Subjection to home authority. Too much self-will now-a-days in children; they are impatient of restraint, want to be their own masters, to strike out walks of life when very young. Our Lord probably wrought at His reputed father’s trade. Anyhow, He was subject to His parents, i.e.

(1) Never gainsaid their authority.

(2) Never crossed their wishes.

(3) Never questioned their right to His time.

(4) Never murmured or rebelled against them in word or deed.

II. CHURCH LIFE.

1. Religion is for children as well as for those grown up. Children are members of Christ’s Church, and should be trained as such.

2. Like the Jews, let us early teach children Holy Scripture. We are more favoured than they, in having the gospel to impart to our little ones.

3. Child-life is passed, as it were, between the font and the holy table. With confirmation child-life, strictly speaking, ends.

4. Let the child ever be taught to look forward with longing and hope to the time when he may go up to the great Christian feast, Holy Communion.

5. Let religious duties be made a custom, so that, as with Jesus, they may be instinctively kept up in later years of manhood.

III. SCHOOL LIFE.. Education a question of the day. Religious education the only legitimate form for a Christian child. But the child’s part is in accepting and seeking knowledge.

1. Children must be content to learn. Teaching is necessary. Even Jesus received instruction.

2. Children should be encouraged to inquire into things. (Thos. H. Barnett.)

Ungrudging service

“When they had fulfilled the days”--St. Joseph and the blessed Virgin did not only attend the Passover, which was celebrated on the fourteenth day of the first month at even, but stayed in Jerusalem also all the days of the feast of unleavened bread; and thus did not leave the city to return home till the afternoon of the eighth day after their arrival. They were not in duty bound to stay so long; they might have gone back sooner without doing anything wrong, provided that, for all the days of the feast which followed the Passover they had been careful not to eat any leavened bread at their own home. But devout people, as they were, do not consider how little of their time they can give to God without doing wrong, but give Him as much as ever they can, and delight in worshipping Him. Think of this, when you are tempted to shorten your prayers, or to drop for the day your reading of Holy Scripture, or to feel the hours of Sunday a restraint and a weariness, and to long that they would fly faster. Prayer and Scripture and Sunday are only dull because your heart is not in them, because you do not try to throw your mind into them, and so to create for yourself an interest in them. If your heart were in them, be sure you would find them the purest of all pleasures, and wish you had a longer time to give to them, not a shorter. (Dean Goulburn.)

Passover duties and employments

It will be interesting to know how St. Joseph and St. Mary spent the days which they are here said to have “fulfilled,” especially when we remember that they had the Holy Child with them, whose human mind, we may be sure, would drink in eagerly everything which He saw in the Temple worship. Where, then, in the first place, did they live during these days? Some of the country people who came up to keep the Passover were accommodated in private houses. This was the case with our Lord and His disciples, who ate together His last Passover in a private house, to which He directed them by the token of a man carrying a pitcher of water, who should enter into it. It was usual in these cases for the guests to leave behind them, as a kind of payment for their accommodation, the skin of the lamb, and the utensils employed in cooking it. But very often such accommodation was not to be found; every inn and private house in Jerusalem was quite full, and in this case people from the country were obliged to lodge without the walls in a tent which they brought with them. Perhaps St. Joseph and St. Mary may have been all the more ready to do this, because, having the Holy Child with them, whose life had already been sought by those in power, they may have thought it prudent not to be seen in the city more than was absolutely necessary. St. Joseph would have to go to the Temple on the afternoon of the fourteenth of Abib to kill his Passover lamb, and probably he would take our Lord with him. The Holy Child watched the slaughter of the lamb, as the blood gushed forth from the wound into the golden cup held by one of the priests to receive it, and was then splashed out in one jet at the foot of the altar of burnt-offering. Then they returned to their tent, carrying the carcase of the lamb with them, and prepared the supper, of which, probably, as their household must have been too small for the lamb, and as ten people at least were required to make a Passover company, some of St. Joseph’s family or neighbours partook with them. The first thing would be to roast the lamb, which was usually done by running two skewers of pomegranate wood, one lengthwise through the body of the creature, and another crossing it through the breast and forelegs, so that the lamb had the appearance of being crucified, and then placing it carefully in the midst of an oven, the bricks of which were made red-hot, but not allowing it to touch the sides. Then they would spread the table, and place on the sideboard, ready at hand, a plate of unleavened bread (large thin biscuits), another of bitter herbs, such as endive, or wild lettuce, and a vessel containing a thick sauce, made of the consistency of clay, to remind them of the brickmaking in Egypt, into which sauce everything eaten at the supper was to be dipped. Last would come the partaking of the supper. St. Joseph, as head of the family, would take a cup of red wine in his hand, and, after saying a grace, taste it and pass it round. Then the herbs were placed on the table and partaken of; then the unleavened bread; and, that being done, the roasted lamb was brought in and placed before the head of the family. But before it was eaten, a second cup of wine was filled; and then it was customary for some child (perhaps, in this case, it may have been our Lord Himself) to ask the head of the house, “What meaneth this service?” In reply, the reason of keeping the Passover was recited, &c., after which Psalms 114:1-8; Psalms 114:1-8. were sung. Then the lamb was carved and eaten; a third and a fourth cup of wine succeeded; and then all was concluded by singing Psa 115:-18. (Dean Goulburn.)