Our priest said during RCIA that Mary and Joseph’s three day search was a prefigurement of the 3 days that Jesus would spend in the tomb.
He said it also was a reminded to Mary of her travail, which Simeon foretold at Jesus’ circumcision at the Temple, that a sword would also pierce her heart.
P.S. Jesus and Mary were of about the same age when they were called by the Father to begin a mission. Mary to conceive and Jesus to instruct.
This is right.
Jesus was in the temple as a direct fulfillment of prophecy
Ge 14:4 Twelve years they served Chedorlaomer, and in the thirteenth year they rebelled.
Each of the nine kings referred to is a shadow of Christ. Together they represent Christ as the divine word (four represent the four voices as prophet, priest, king and judge) and as the flesh (five is the number of man). The was between the four and the five prophesy Jesus’s coming of age where he began to wrestle against the temptations of the flesh.
Chedorlaomer means ‘handful of sheaves’
Israel is the harvest of sheaves and his parents are just a few, so they are the handful of sheaves. Jesus served them 12 years, and then ‘rebelled’. This is riddle language and does not accuse him of sin.
He is at the temple preparing for bar mitzvah. One of the questions that he would ask is “What are these stones” referring to a pile of rocks by the water. But instead of asking the way other children did, he asked about the stone that was split and gave water, the cleft in the rock, Jacob’s pillow that was many stones in the evening and a single stone in the morning, and David’s five smooth stones that he put in his shepherd’s vessel.
As he asked about them, the teachers saw a picture of the promised messiah in each of the stones that they had never seen before.
From his perspective, he was becoming a man and as a man, his rearing would move from his mother to his father. He expected to now be trained by God the Father. Mary and Joseph reminded him that he was still in their care.
He would not be ‘weaned’ until the wedding at Cana, where before this he could show where he was staying, and after he had no place to stay. Jesus had said to Mary that he was not yet ready, and she pushed him out knowing that it was his time to walk with his Father.
When Jesus was asked “why have you treated us this way” is was akin to asking “Why have you hated us this way”. Hate is simply not thinking of the other person first. It is the opposite of love, which is putting the other first. Jesus would use this later when he would say that we must hate our father and mother to follow him. He simply is saying that He must come before even parents. And this claim of his is another evidence that he equated himself with God.
As the kings prefigures Jesus in the temple, they also prefigure Christ on the cross. Jesus served Israel ‘twelve years’ these represent the ful Torah word of God spoken by 3 (father, Son, Holy Ghost) in four voices (3x4 =12)
When he was finished he ‘rebelled’. Now the rebellion represents Gethsemane and the war represent the cross. After the rebellion, they eat bread, prefiguring the Eucharist.
The same story happens repetitively in prophetic recapitulation.
