It is the very first time that Jesus speaks in the Gospels and he does so embarrassing us allbut first and foremost his interlocutors who are mother Mary herself and her husband Joseph. The story is told to us by Luke (2.41-52) and in our eyes Jesus is alone a twelve year old boywith an apparent hint of rebellion. As is known, he escapes the control of his pilgrim parents in Jerusalem and remains in the city, indeed, in the very heart of Israel’s tradition, the temple, ready to challenge even the most qualified priestly class.
In reality, that age – as happens today for the Jew at 13 – perhaps marked the transition to adult statuswith the deed named bar mitzvahliterally “son of the precept”, which marked the obligation to observe the Law. Luca was able to expertly reconstruct the emotions that are part, often in a much more dramatic way, of the experience of many current parents who see their son leave the house without warning (who does not remember the escape from the family of the so-called “prodigal son” in the parable of the same evangelist?).
Once she finds her son, Mary opens the dialogue by expressing the pain and torment of a mother: “Son, why did you do this to us?”. There is a shade of I reproach which continues with the evocation of the agitated physical and internal journey of search and fear: «Behold, your father and I, anguished, were looking for you!». Jesus’ response is rather harsh: “Why were you looking for me?”. It is at this point that he adduces a surprising justification, expressed with a phrase which is the subject of at least two different interpretations of the Greek original.
Jesus states: «You did not know that it is necessary for me to exist en tois tou patrós mou?», literally busy “in the things of my Father”. For some it would be a reference to the sacred place where he was: “I must stay in my Father’s house”.
More likely, however, is that – now of age – he is referring to his task of implementing the project that the heavenly Father has on him, different from what Joseph, his legal father, could have hypothesized. Those who read us regularly will remember that in the last episode we referred to the value of the Italian word “incontro” to describe a dialogue between people.
We said that it includes the preposition “in” which indicates turning towards another in the vicinity. This is what Jesus himself will do in the end: “He went down with them and came to Nazareth and was submissive to them.” There is, however, also the adverb “against” which defines it a distance because each person has their own autonomy, history and identity. These are precisely the words of Jesus just quoted and it is significant that Luke adds: «They (Mary and Joseph) they didn’t understand what he had told them.” However, there is a final note, the final fruit of Jesus’ first dialogue, and it concerns Mary: “His mother kept all these things in her heart”.
