Scripture is a reality that grows along with little children.
Saint Augustine
Being ourselves often means living as God wants us to, even if that looks different than what the world tells us is proper or popular. Through His ministry and example, Jesus broadens understanding of how God communicates with us and demonstrates the dignity of acting on desires spoken into our hearts.
Jesus rarely taught without initiating dialogue or telling stories, and His stories were different because they posed riddles or problems. Parables present questions rather than answers.
So, in giving people parables, Jesus also gives us power to think and question. He provokes curiosity into the hidden mysteries of the kingdom of heaven.
Knowledge of God is endlessly pursued. Seek and you will find, Jesus said, and it turns out we are often found in the process. Intelligence alone will not decipher deeper meanings, but when we bow to the beauty of scripture, we discover a personal relationship with God not limited by a veil or out of reach on a scribe’s podium.
Jesus’ parables are seeds of humility that, when consumed with childlike wonder and awe, stir revelations. When we offer our belief in boundless possibility to the Spirit of Truth, we open up to learn the great and unsearchable things that nourish our hungry hearts and minds.
How do you expect to reach your own perfection by leading somebody else’s life?
Thomas Merton
Jesus came of age under the tutelage of Joseph in their family business and work as carpenters. Yet it was the actualization of Jesus’ vocation as a teacher and minister that led to His transfiguration and ultimate revelation of Jesus as the Christ and God with us.
And what is vocation but the calling of desire? The tug toward something, the need to do something or go somewhere, an outward expression of the delicate individuality that exists only in the deepest place of our soul.
Could we really know better than God the unique purpose the Holy Spirit breathed into each of us before time began?
So, discernment of desire, and the courageous humility to unfold it, enable us to become more fully ourselves.
Luke’s gospel tells us that young Jesus and the Holy Family went to Jerusalem for the annual Passover feast. Mary and Joseph began their return trip to Nazareth, but Jesus quietly remained in Jerusalem. Eventually, His parents realized that Jesus was not among the caravan of relatives and friends, and after three days of panicked searching, Mary and Joseph found Jesus sitting among the religious teachers in the temple courts, listening, asking questions, and astounding all with His unusual understanding of God’s Word.
His parents were incredulous with stress and worry. “Why have You done this to us?” Mary asked.
Jesus, knowing He was never lost but actually finding more of Himself, replied, “Why were you looking for Me? Did you not know that I had to be in my Father’s house?”
He didn’t ask for permission to stay in Jerusalem, nor did Jesus even tell anyone He was going to the temple. He simply followed His heart’s knowing to the place where He felt the peace of home.
And in doing so, Jesus activated His purpose, shared through His vocation, to completely redefine how we enter into the presence of God and search the divine truth of His Word.
