You and I can attain to three kinds of knowledge. There is a knowledge we get in a natural way. This is the usual experimental knowledge which we pick up as we grow. Then some people also have infused knowledge. That means knowing, like the prophets, for instance, things which they couldn’t possibly have learned in a natural way. And then you and I will one day be capable of still another knowledge when we shall meet God face to face. And now it is such a marvel to think: from the very first moment of His existence on earth, our Lord Jesus Christ enjoyed this vision. He always saw the Father face to face. He also possessed all this intuitive, infused knowledge. Isaiah knew that already when he prophesied about Him: “And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord” (Isa. 11:2).
Since Jesus possessed it all — always — in these two knowledges He could not grow. And then, oh wonder, He is a little boy like yours and mine, who can grow in wisdom and grace before God and men. This unique mystery can never be explained, it can only be believed. Because Jesus had two natures, a human nature and divine nature in one person, He could advance humanly while He was always in God, with God — while He was God. Our theologians call this the hypostatic union.
Just what did that mean now in His daily life? Why didn’t we begin to ponder about it in our hearts? We shall never be finished, but we have all eternity to continue.
These are the precious years up to His 12th birthday when Jesus was a child. Our children wanted to know whether they observed birthdays and feast days and other anniversaries in the holy family. After some thinking we decided that they must have, because Mary and Joseph both understood to the fullest extent what those days really meant in the history of mankind. When the angel asked Mary whether she would agree to be the mother of the Messiah and she answered her immortal, “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord,” when “the light shone in the darkness” in the cave outside of Bethlehem. They saw these days as days of tremendous grace which the Heavenly Father poured out over His undeserving children. In filial gratitude Mary must always have celebrated the anniversaries, and so in the first Christian families they celebrated just privately among themselves birthdays, holidays, and anniversaries like that of the annunciation, visitation, and presentation.
Let us come back to the thought that Jesus was a real child. Much later He will one day solemnly declare to us how we have to be and what we have to do if we want to go to heaven. He will say it in His straightforward, unsophisticated, unmistakable way when He takes a little boy, points to him and says to the disciples, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 18:3). Just like that: “If you don’t, then you won’t.” There is absolutely nothing we can do about it, but one day we have to face this phrase and what it means. We get some help in how we have to take it when we think of another incident when our Lord said to him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Nicodemus, the typical grownup, said, stupefied, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?” This brought him a slightly ironical, “Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand this?” (John 3:3–10). So when He says: “Unless …you become like children,” this is parallel, and we are not supposed to ask in the same stupefied way, “How can I become small again after I have grown up?” We know He doesn’t mean that. So we face the necessity of having to do research work on the question “What are children?” In what ways do children differ from grownups mentally and spiritually, if the physical comparison is to be disregarded but the word still stands: “Unless you become….” And we are about to make one of the most beautiful discoveries, urged on by the reading of the Gospels.
The most striking difference between little ones and grownups is that little ones cannot worry, because they have no past and no future. They live only in the present moment. Just let us watch children. If they eat, they eat; if they sleep, they sleep. There is a beautiful English word which describes how they do whatever they do. They do everything “wholeheartedly,” whereas grownups always are half-hearted. While they do one thing, they have to worry about the past — “Oh, I should never have …oh, if only I had.” Of the future they contemplate, “My, and what is going to happen when …and what will I do or what will I say if….” So they are, in the true sense of the word, split personalities and can never do anything with their whole heart. That’s why that grave word is spoken over them. They cannot go to heaven because they cannot fulfill the first and most important commandment, which our Lord said was, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind” (Matt. 22:37). Only children or childlike souls can do anything with their whole heart. That’s the first and most tremendous lesson.
Then we find a few more things. Children are full of confidence. They have not learned yet to be suspicious, and when they stretch out their little arms, what else can you do but take them up?
Children learn by observing and imitating. Before they go to school they have learned a whole language and all the necessary ways of acting and doing in order to go through life: how to eat, how to sleep, etc. They watch the ones they love and trust, father and mother, sisters and brothers. If our Lord wants us to be like little children in this regard, He certainly has supplied the means. He has told us about the Father in heaven, we have the example of His wonderful mother and of all our older sisters and brothers, the generations who have gone before us. We have plenty to watch and imitate. There is just one hitch to it. Even the nicest little boy (or girl as far as that goes) will have his faults. Even the greatest saint will first have had to do an enormous amount of work to become like one of those little ones. But there we have Jesus in the first 12 years of His life when He was also in stature a child, a holy child, the perfect child.
The greatest beauty is now that mentally He will not change — the oneness of purpose, the wholeheartedness with which we see Him do everything, the complete absence of even ability to worry in His character, His watching the Father and imitating Him. How truly He can say, “For I have given you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you” (John 13:15).
In His great understanding of human nature He uses the word “become.” “Unless you become as little children….” He knows that the way of the world is this: a little one is hardly out of diapers when he is told approvingly, “Now you are a big boy.” When he goes to kindergarten, “Now you are not a baby anymore.” When he is in the first grade, “Well, you are not in kindergarten anymore; you are a big boy now.” This goes on until in high school he doesn’t have to be told that he is a big boy now. He knows it himself. Then one day sooner or later he will be banged on the head by those words of our Lord, and all the growing up will not seem like an achievement any longer, but like something which has to be undone. That is when the “becoming” starts. After we have grown up in the eyes of the world, we have to “grow down” in the eyes of God. We have to. There is no way out if we want to go to heaven. Heaven is full of children; our Lord himself said so. One of the quickest ways to accomplish this “growing down” is to become very much at home in the little house in Nazareth — to watch and to imitate.
Chapter 11
“Did You Not Know...?”
Luke says, “Now his parents went to Jerusalem every year at the feast of the Passover. And when he was twelve years old, they went up according to custom” (Luke 2:41–42).
We are more or less used to accepting the idea of their taking Him with them to the temple obviously for the first time as we might take our little ones for the first time with us to church. It is very much worthwhile to look at the map and to find out a few things about these pilgrimages, which the Jewish men were obligated to make. There were three major feasts, about which the Book of Deuteronomy says, “Three times a year all
your males shall appear before the Lord your God …at the feast of unleavened bread, at the feast of weeks, and at the feast of booths. They shall not appear before the Lord empty-handed; every man shall give as he is able” (Deut. 16:16–17).
The greatest of these feasts was the Pasch, the Feast of Unleavened Bread. The very word “Pasch” meant “Passover,” as this feast was instituted in order to remind the Jews throughout all generations of that unforgettable night when the Angel of Death had passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt whose doorposts had been smeared with the blood of a lamb. That is why a lamb had to be offered at the Pasch, and it had to be offered in Jerusalem by the head of every family.
Therefore, when the days of the Pasch came close — it was at the time of the full moon in spring — from all over the world Jews set out toward Jerusalem. The women were not obliged to go along, but the really pious women did, as we know from Hannah, the mother of Samuel, who went every year. Children under 12 years of age were obviously not taken along. There was a twofold coming of age for a Jewish boy. At 12 years he came of age before the law, and at 20 before the state. We in our countries are so used to the number 21 in connection with the coming of age, that we have the feeling 12 is almost too soon. In the Orient, however, girls and boys mature so much earlier that a 12-year-old boy there might be like an 18 year old here.
The Jews living in foreign countries, some many hundreds of miles away, were not bound to attend the Pasch every year in Jerusalem, but they wanted to come at least once in their lives. When they had come from such vast distances, they would stay on for those 50 days until the Feast of Weeks, or Pentecost, and after that, return home. Luke tells us about Pentecost: “Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven” (Acts 2:5). He continues to enumerate them, and it is very interesting to find a map of the world as it was known at the time of Christ and find there “every nation under heaven.”
There was a Jewish priest, Josephus Flavius by name, who lived just one generation after our Lord, and who wrote down practically everything of interest about his time. His collected works have been brought out in a giant edition, and although some of it is tedious to read, he is still an almost inexhaustible source of information.1 He dwells at great length on those feasts and how they were celebrated. He is not always too accurate in numbers they say, and when he comes to talking about himself or his people, he is pretty much conceited, making a kind of wonder child of himself. But otherwise, we really learn things from him.
If we have made ourselves acquainted with the general picture of the countryside and this month of Nisan, as they called the early spring, we know that the land of Israel would be at its greenest and most beautiful and all the roads leading to Jerusalem would be swarming with pilgrims. Then we pick out that one caravan, the one coming from Nazareth. Pilgrims hardly ever travel alone; merely for safety’s sake they prefer to travel in caravans. They also like the companionship, and as they ride on camels or donkeys or walk through the dust of the road, they chant psalms and hymns together and play on their flutes.
In order to go from Galilee to Judea there were two main routes; we can find them on the map. The shortest one would lead through the country of Samaria. Samaria! The people living there were of mixed background, descending partly from the Hebrews and partly from the Gentiles who had been brought in by the kings of the Assyrians. “And the king of Assyria brought people from Babylon, Cuthah, Avva, Hamath, and Sepharvaim, and placed them in the cities of Samaria” (2 Kings 17:24). Because they were of mixed ancestry the Orthodox Jews hated them. To them they were heretics, and there was no worse epithet than to be called “Samaritan.” One day the enraged Pharisees would hurl this name at Our Lord: “You are a Samaritan and have a demon” (John 8:48). It sounds almost as if these two things belonged together. The Samaritans were shown this concept in most unmistakable terms.
The rabbis had compiled a whole code of laws and regulations as to how a Jew should behave with a Samaritan. He was allowed to look at him only once, just to make sure he was one. Then he had to avert his eyes and keep them averted. Of course, he was not allowed to touch him or touch anything which had been touched by a Samaritan — and so on and so on. So when we read about all these petty laws, we understand the surprise of the woman at Jacob’s well when she says: “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” (John 4:9.) It is really true that whatever we learn of the habits and customs will come in handy later when we lovingly study the public life of our Lord.
The pilgrims from Nazareth had to bring their own provisions for the pilgrimage. Nothing should be bought in Samaria. There were traditional overnight places all mapped out from of old. The first stop used to be made in Engannim. (In Josephus Flavius’ work we would find it under the name Ginea, and on a modern map of our days, Jenim.) It is about two miles away from Nazareth, and the first village after the pilgrims were through the plains of Esdraelon. The Samaritans had a temple of their own on Mount Garizim, of which they were very jealous. The Jews constantly rubbed in what they thought of them and their temple, and this didn’t make the Samaritans any more friendly toward the Jews. We learn of many hostilities breaking out in more or less bloody ways between them.
After the first night the pilgrims would go into the Samaritan hill country toward Sichem, which lay in a pass between the mountains. There Jacob had given to his people the famous well; and Joseph, the most famous of his sons, was buried there. The second night was spent in famous Sichem. On the third day they had a 25-mile stretch ahead of them to get to Beeroth. This was already out of the territory of the Samaritans. This was an insignificant little place only 8 miles from Jerusalem, but it will never be forgotten because here it was that a mother discovered she had lost her child. Tradition says that Helena and later the Crusaders built a church in memory of that sorrowful young mother who felt the sword pierce.
Thus, on the last day the pilgrims had only 8 miles more, and would arrive by noon, in plenty of time to find shelter for the night.
All the tombs and sepulchres along the way would be freshly whitewashed so they could be avoided by the pilgrims. Otherwise, if they should stumble over one, they would be liturgically unclean and not be able to celebrate the Pasch. Some day our Lord will feel like calling somebody names, and will say to His adversaries, “You are like whitewashed tombs” (Matt. 23:27), which must be a crushing thing for an Orthodox Jew to be called.
Jesus, who, as a human boy, could add new knowledge and progress in wisdom, was one of the pilgrims in that caravan in this memorable year. We can imagine how He, being of the highest intelligence, asked questions of His mother, with whom He would go to Jerusalem, all along the way, and how He would remember the holy history of His people throughout the ages. When they came into the hill country of Judea, the slopes would be simply covered with flocks of sheep. From Josephus Flavius we learn that once there were more than 120,000 lambs slaughtered in the temple at one Passover. As we know, every lamb had to be eaten by a group of people not less than 10 nor more than 20, so we can figure on an attendance of between two and three million pilgrims, and we can also figure the size of the flocks of sheep.
We can only guess what the boy Jesus would think when He saw all those happy young lambs skipping about in the pastures. Even the infused knowledge He had was much greater than that of all prophets and all angels together, so He must have known also in a human way what would happen to “the Lamb of God” 21 years hence.
On the next morning the pilgrims would catch their first glimpse of Jerusalem, the Holy City, and there, glittering, with its golden roof, the temple — the temple! Beth jahweh, it was called — the House of God. What must the boy Jesus have felt when He saw the House of His Father for the first time. The holy family went into the Holy City by the northern gate.
The holy writers would remark on the handsomeness of young David and the wisdom of young Solomon. Here was more than David, here was more than Solomon
— but no one seemed to notice a thing and, unrecognized, the Lord of heaven and earth came unto His own city and again, His own knew Him not.
Joseph would get busy procuring the paschal lamb, and, knowing boys, it is more than likely that Jesus accompanied him. They had to find out also with whom they would join up to make a company of ten, to buy the bitter herbs and all that was needed for the celebration of the feast. All this had to be done before the end of the afternoon on the day before the feast.
When thinking back on the many folk customs we had in Austria, and how one responds as a child, with eagerness and expectations at certain traditions being repeated in a certain way, it is most striking. This young boy not only watched the preparations for the observance of the holy customs, He knew that it all was merely a symbol and He would be the fulfillment. With what eagerness did He watch!
And now we see them celebrate the feast. Every part of the ancient ceremony is described, the prayers which were uttered by Jesus, Mary, and Joseph are written down. All we have to do is look for it and tarry a little to add out of our own hearts the emotions, which may have gone through those holiest of hearts. After all, their beloved Jesus would now be a Son of the law, no child any more. That is what singled out this Pasch from the others.
The Jews were not obliged to stay in Jerusalem for all the seven days of the Passover, but the really zealous ones did. Therefore, it must be the old Holy Week which Luke means when he says: “And when the feast was ended, as they were returning, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem. His parents did not know it” (Luke 2:43). When the pilgrims from Nazareth assembled at the northern gate, which was called the Damascus Gate, Jesus was not among them. Mary must have thought, Now as He is of age, He will be with Joseph and the men. Joseph might have thought, He doesn’t want to let His mother travel alone amid strangers; He must be with her.
Yesterday, Today, and Forever Page 8