Luke 2:43 And when they had fulfilled the days, as they returned, the child Jesus tarried behind in Jerusalem… "When they had fulfilled the days" — St. Joseph and the blessed Virgin did not only attend the Passover, which was celebrated on the fourteenth day of the first month at even, but stayed in Jerusalem also all the days of the feast of unleavened bread; and thus did not leave the city to return home till the afternoon of the eighth day after their arrival. They were not in duty bound to stay so long; they might have gone back sooner without doing anything wrong, provided that, for all the days of the feast which followed the Passover they had been careful not to eat any leavened bread at their own home. But devout people, as they were, do not consider how little of their time they can give to God without doing wrong, but give Him as much as ever they can, and delight in worshipping Him. Think of this, when you are tempted to shorten your prayers, or to drop for the day your reading of Holy Scripture, or to feel the hours of Sunday a restraint and a weariness, and to long that they would fly faster. Prayer and Scripture and Sunday are only dull because your heart is not in them, because you do not try to throw your mind into them, and so to create for yourself an interest in them. If your heart were in them, be sure you would find them the purest of all pleasures, and wish you had a longer time to give to them, not a shorter. (Dean Goulburn.) Parallel Verses KJV: And when they had fulfilled the days, as they returned, the child Jesus tarried behind in Jerusalem; and Joseph and his mother knew not of it. |
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