The Fifth Joyful Mystery

“And having fulfilled the days, when they returned, the child Jesus remained in Jerusalem; and his parents knew it not.” Luke 2:43

The Fifth Joyful Mystery of the Holy Rosary is a concise account of a familiar event that most parents face sooner or later: the seeking of a lost child. In 12 short verses, Saint Luke packs in the principal associated emotions: fright, uncertainty, dread, urgency, sorrow, regret, heartbreak, anxiety, guilt, rebuke; then finally relief, joy, healing, and residual bewilderment. Family dynamics have not changed since 12 A.D.

Our son, Ricky, did not simply wander off from our sight for a time. He is truly lost. Alive, but hiding from us and from reality. He has ditched us physically, mentally and emotionally. Unlike 12-year-old Jesus, one would not find him in a temple giving a Socratic talk to the most learned men in Judea. Rather he was treading the swamp water of pagan Washington, DC as a pretend woman in a cultural bubble where there is a ready supply of stupid, gullible and exploitive people of all social classes happy to indulge him his fetish.

But the Holy Parents, Mary and Joseph, can commiserate with our sorrow and the sorrows of many of you, dear readers. God did not give them an easy ride as His Son’s Mother and foster father on earth. Poverty and hardship were his parents’ constant companions from Jesus’ birth in a drafty, smelly manger, followed by flight to Egypt to escape King Herod’s infanticide, through to the prophecy of hardship and pain from Simeon at the Presentation. Even worse horrors were to follow for the Blessed Mother on the way to and at Calvary. Think about the Holy Parent’s heightened disquiet when discovering that they lost track of the Child Messiah while returning from a feast in Jerusalem. They must have thought His bloody Passion had already begun.

Mary and St. Joseph, while you were seeking Jesus, did you see your Son in every element of nature and in every human interaction on the way? Did you overhear someone singing a merry song that your Jesus loved and often sang along with? Did you see boys playing little games that He played too, only Jesus was not there? Did you get random thoughts and memories of His infancy and toddlerhood? Like did He love to leap from furniture so Pop could catch him mid-air? St. Joseph, did you ever pretend you were a horse or a mule and let Jesus ride on your back? Did you remember the nature walks you took with Him? Your conversations? The questions He would ask you and the way He weighed your answers? Did you picture something He made in your carpentry shop? Perhaps you kept an artist’s image of Jesus to show to people who might identify Him?

Did you both shake with fear that these memories would be all you would have left of your Child?

Were there reminiscences of Him travelling through your minds at lightning speed during your sleepless days and nights seeking Him?

Did you stop on the way back to Jerusalem not to rest and refresh, but to weep?

Did you have pangs of guilt that maybe you were not up to the task of raising the Son of God? Did you start to think of something you might have done to alienate Jesus and displease his Father in Heaven? How did it feel that neighbors murmured against you that you were bad parents for losing track of Jesus? Did you get the same unrelenting nagging feeling that we have that maybe that’s true and God was punishing you? Did you feel that God abandoned you?  

After the ordeal was over and Jesus returned with you obediently to Nazareth, did the devil assault you with nightmares and daytime flashbacks featuring worst case evils happening to your Son? Did your consciences swell with guilt that ruined your appetite and desire to do things you once enjoyed? Did you wake up at 2 AM almost every morning to mope and fight insomnia? Did afternoon naps become your primary sleep time? Did paid comedians joke about the “dead names” of the de-sexed?

Put all these miseries into today’s context, and there you have the life we endure. That of my wife, other son and daughter, thousands of other parents, relatives and me. That of numerous families everywhere in America. Though strangers to one another, we all anguish together.

Mary of no sin and St. Joseph the just man: I appeal to you on behalf of us and all parents who have lost a child in this fashion. Our losses are not divinely willed short-term ones, but indefinite ones to a putrescent, nasty cult that slid its barbed claws into our children’s souls under cover of internet darkness. You know the pain of a lost child and every fear of what harm might have come to Jesus went through your minds. I beg you to console us in ways others would not. The search for our children began years ago, and as of this writing there is no clear method of recovery and only rare instances of full return. We flail away hanging onto worldly hopes that actions by mortals, such as the Cass Report, might catch on and slow the tide of child trans abuse. We are even foolish enough to believe that a pet politician can help us. The solution is not of this world; there is only a supernatural one and I appeal to its celestial Powers to bestow Mercy on us.

Consider the relief you felt when you finally found Him. Petition for us to earn that same joy. Why does Heaven continue to deny our children the Grace to repent and return to us? In the words of King David, “How long, oh Lord wilt Thou forget me unto this end?”

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