But the exile in Egypt was short. Jesus was brought back, held in His mother’s arms, rocked throughout the long journey by the patient step of the ass, to His father’s house in Nazareth, humble house and shop where the hammer pounded and the rasp scraped until the setting of the sun.
The canonical gospels say nothing of these years: the Apocrypha give many details but unworthy of belief. Luke, the wise doctor, is content to set down that the boy grew and was strong; that is, that he was not sickly and overworked. He was a boy developed as he should be: healthy, a bearer of health, as was fitting in one who was to restore health to others by the mere touch of His hand.
Every year, says Luke, the parents of Jesus went to Jerusalem for the feast of unleavened bread in memory of the escape from Egypt. They went with a crowd of neighbors, friends, and acquaintances to keep each other company on the journey. They were cheerful like people going to a festival rather than to a service in memory of a solemn crisis: for the Passover had become at Jerusalem a great feast day, when all the Jews scattered about the Empire came together.
On the twelfth Passover after the birth of Jesus, as the group from Nazareth was returning from the holy city, Mary found that her son was not with them. All day long she sought for Him, asking every acquaintance, but in vain. The next morning the mother turned back, retraced her steps over the road and went up and down the streets and open places of Jerusalem, fixing her dark eyes on every boy she met, asking the mothers standing in the open doors, begging her countrymen not yet gone, to help her find her lost son. A mother who has lost her son does not rest until she has found him; she thinks no more of herself, she does not feel weariness, effort, hunger. She does not shake the dust from her clothes nor arrange her hair. She cares not for the curious glances of the passers-by. Her distracted eyes see nothing but the image of him, who is no longer beside her.
Finally on the third day she came to the Temple, looked about in the courts, and saw at last in the shadow of a portico a group of old men talking. She came up timidly, for those men with long cloaks and long beards seemed people of importance who would pay no attention to a plain woman from Galilee, and discovered in the center of the circle the waving hair, the shining eyes, the tanned face, the fresh lips of her Jesus. Those old men were talking with her son of the Law and the Prophets. They were asking Him questions and He was answering; He put questions to them in His turn and they marveled at Him, astonished that a boy should know the words of the Lord so well. But He remembered the books which He had heard read out in the little Synagogue of Nazareth: and His memory had retained every syllable.
Mary remained for a few moments gazing at Him, hardly believing her eyes. Her heart, a moment before beating fast with fear, was now beating fast with astonishment. But she could not restrain herself any more and suddenly in a loud voice called Him by name. The old men took themselves off and the mother snatched her son to her breast and silently clasped Him to her, the tears which she had kept back till then raining down on His face.
She clutched Him, took Him away, and then, certain that she had Him with her, that she had not lost Him, the happy mother remembered the despairing mother, “Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us? behold, thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing.”
“How is it that ye sought me? wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?”
Weighty words, especially when said by a twelve-year-old boy to a mother who had sought Him for three long days.
And, the Evangelist goes on, “And they understood not the saying which he spake unto them.” But after so many centuries of Christian experience we can understand those words, which seemed at first sight to be hard and proud.
How is it that ye sought me? Do you not know that I can never be lost, that I can never be lost by any one, even those who will bury me under the earth? I will be everywhere where any one believes in me, even if they do not see me with their eyes. I cannot be lost from any man, by any man, provided that he hold me in his heart. I shall not be lost alone in the desert nor alone on the waters of the lake, nor alone in the garden of olives, nor alone in the tomb.
“And who is this father of whom you speak to me? He is the legal father, the human father, but my real Father is in heaven. He is the Father who spoke to the patriarchs face to face, who put words into the mouths of the prophets. I know what He told them of me, His eternal wishes, the laws He has given to His people, the covenant which He has signed with all men. If I am to do what He has commanded me, I must be busy about what is truly His. What is a legal, temporal tie confronted with a mystic, spiritual and eternal bond?”