Sara J. (kefuwa)’s Reviews > Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives > Status Update

These are days spent suffering the absence of Jesus, days of darkness, whose heaviness can be sensed in the mother's words: "Child, why have you treated us so? Behold your father and I have been looking for you anxiously: (Lk 2:48). Thus an arc extends from this first Passover of Jesus to his last, the Passover of the Cross.

The 3 days may be explained in quite practical terms: Mary&Joseph had spend one day travelling north, a further day was needed in order to retrace their steps, & on the third day they eventually found Jesus. While the three days are thus a perfectly plausible chronological indication, one must nevertheless agree with Rene Laurentin when he detects here a silent reference to the 3 days between Cross and resurrection.

The supposed of actual birth of a Messianic king would inevitably bring trial and tribulation to the people of Jerusalem. They knew Herod, after all. What from the lofty perspective of daily life is merely a disturbance, a cause for concern and fear. It is true: God disturbs our comfortable day-to-day existence. Jesus' kingship goes hand in hand with his Passion.

The key point is this: the wise men from the east are a new beginning. They represent the journeying of humanity toward Christ. They initiate a procession that continues throughout history. Not only do they represent the people who have found the way to Christ: they represent the inner aspiration of the human spirit, the dynamism of religions and human reason toward him.

They represent an inner dynamic of religion toward self-transcendence, which involves a search for truth, a search for the true God & hence "philosophy" in the original sense of the word. Wisdom, then, serves to purify the message of "science": the rationality of that message does not remain at the level of intellectual knowledge, but seeks understanding in its fullness&so raises reason to its loftiest possibilities.

All kinds of factors could have combined to generate the idea that the language of the star contained a message of hope. But none of this would have prompted people to set off on a journey, unless they were people of hope, people on the lookout for the true star of salvation. The men of whom Matthew speaks were not just astronomers. The were "wise".

Man's "contradiction" of God runs all the way through history. What proves Jesus to be the true sign of God is that he takes upon himself the contradiction of God, he draws it to himself all the way to the contradiction of the Cross.

Beneath the language about falling & rising of many, there are echoes of a prophecy from Is 8:14, in which God himself is designated as a rock against which men stumble & fall. So within the Passion saying, we see the deep bond that links Jesus with God himself. God & his word-Jesus, God's living word-are "signs", challenging us to make a choice.

The theology of glory is inseparably linked with the theology of the Cross. The Suffering Servant has the great mission to bring God's light to the world. Yet it is in the darkness of the Cross that that mission is fulfilled.