Mother Mary. Why would take your eyes off Jesus and focus on her?

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OK. So you’ve got Jesus, and he decides to start his ministry now that he’s the technical age of adulthood. So he uses his initiative to stay behind and teach the teachers, and ask them questions to get them thinking, and everyone’s all oooooo…

And then his mom (and dad) come and find him and say, “We’ve been worried and looking for you for three days.”

And he says, “Don’t you know I have to do my Father’s work?”

And then he shelves those plans, goes home with them, and sits in obscurity and obedience for seventeen more years…

So, question #1. Mary is with Jesus his whole life, from the Nativity to the Burial. Do you really think Jesus could be hidden from her, unless he specifically wanted to be hidden for her? It’s not “Home Alone” (“AUUUGHH! We left the Messiah behind!”), but it was a very deliberate move on Jesus’ part.

Question #2, do you think Jesus just carelessly wandered off for no reason, or do you think he had things he needed to accomplish during those three days? Do you think he was being selfish and shortsighted and even being fully God isn’t enough to protect you from acting like a dumb, impulsive teenager, or do you think that everything he did had significance, and everything the Gospel writer recorded (Luke-- which is significant) had super-significance? You could make a stronger argument that this was sinful on Jesus’ part, which we knew was an impossibility, before you could make the argument that it was sinful on Mary’s part.

Question #3 is more of a point. So, of the billions of people who have ever existed, Mary was the closest to Jesus. She nurtured him for nine months; she raised him from an infant; he continued to live with her and care for her into adulthood; they remained together through his ministry, death, and resurrection. But even she lost Jesus for three days. Not through any fault of her own, but because Jesus allowed it to happen. If Mary could lose Jesus for three days— how much more are we in danger of losing Jesus?
 
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LumberJack said:
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Gorgias:
No… Jesus decided to stay behind and ‘teach’ the teachers of the law.
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Not what Luke 2 says:

41 Now his parents went to Jerusalem every year at the feast of the passover.

42 And when he was twelve years old, they went up to Jerusalem after the custom of the feast.

43 And when they had fulfilled the days, as they returned, the child Jesus tarried behind in Jerusalem
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You realize that your quotation proves my point, don’t you? Look again at v43: “Jesus tarried behind in Jerusalem”. Jesus is the actor here, not Mary.

And, if you wanted to claim that “Mary did something incorrect” – as you are claiming in your response to that challenge – you’d have to stand on the assertion that “his mother knew not of it” asserts an incorrect action. (It doesn’t – it just indicates ‘lack of knowledge’. Catholics don’t claim that Mary is omniscient, just sinless. 😉 )
LumberJack said:
Think about it. She comes up and says ‘There’s no more wine’. That is the perfect time to leave the party.
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Think about it. She’s not saying, “it’s time to leave”; her very actions – going to the wine steward and telling him “do whatever [my son] tells you” – should indicate to you that she isn’t looking to retrieve her donkey from valet and head home, but rather, that she wants Jesus to save these people from the embarrassment of failing to provide a proper wedding feast. 😉

In any case, your argument presumes that Jesus – who “wants to party” – is going to do so in the absence of wine? C’mon… at least be consistent, ok? 🤣
LumberJack said:
Or maybe, ‘I want to stay so to get the woman off my back I’ll make some wine. If I don’t I’ll never hear the end of it.’…
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Right: “I want to stay and party, and there’s nothing left to drink.” :roll_eyes:
LumberJack said:
No, the Methodist Church does not teach that. The Gospel of Thomas is recognised by academics as being authentic.
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The writings of Christopher Hitchens are authentic, but that doesn’t make them truth, any more than the ‘gospel of Thomas’ – being authentically written by someone, somewhere – are true.

After all, the fact that someone wrote something somewhere does not prove the worth of the writing, right? 😉
 
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You show a fundamental misunderstanding of Catholicism. We don’t take our eyes off Jesus. You can honor His mother without forgetting Him.
 
Well done, all of you!

Just to reiterate what’s already been pointed out, the Early Church held the Blessed Mother in highest regard, and even Martin Luther had some pretty nice things to say about her. This anti-Marian spirit within certain sects of Protestantism is little more than the result of efforts to de-Catholocize the Christian faith. It’s not a product of theology, but part of that movement which seeks to strip any vestige of Rome from Christianity, regardless of merit or tradition. And that’s going to cause problems should you decide to investigate the last…oh 2000 years of Church history.
 
I mean, Jesus was a twelve year old in the Middle East with millions of children that look just like him. It’d be hard to find him.
 
RKS89 said:
Well done, all of you!

Just to reiterate what’s already been pointed out, the Early Church held the Blessed Mother in highest regard, and even Martin Luther had some pretty nice things to say about her. This anti-Marian spirit within certain sects of Protestantism is little more than the result of efforts to de-Catholocize the Christian faith. It’s not a product of theology, but part of that movement which seeks to strip any vestige of Rome from Christianity, regardless of merit or tradition. And that’s going to cause problems should you decide to investigate the last…oh 2000 years of Church history.
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I would go even farther than you. I would say that these non-denoms are so far from Christianity, that they have just barely more understanding than a Muslim about Christianity.

Rather than arguing about the sinlessness of the Virgin Mary, which requires Faith AND understanding, I would argue that non-denoms are not even Christian by their disowning of Baptismal regeneration. That is SO crucial to being a Christian, understanding sin, and understanding Salvation, that to be ignorant of even this basic Christian concept disqualifies that person from far more Mysterious doctrines like the Immaculate Conception and Mary’s sinless life of Holiness.

Sorry, but that’s how I feel.
 
You realize that in their culture, men and women didn’t travel together? Women and children traveled together, and men traveled together, and they came together at the end of the day when it was time to stop the day’s progress.

So Jesus is of an age where he can travel with either the men or the women. He allows Mary to think he’s traveling with the adult men; he allows Joseph to think he’s traveling with the women and children. And so it’s not until those two groups catch up together that Mary and Joseph are able to put two and two together and see what happened.

You seem to have no problem comprehending that women and men might be segregated in a wedding feast, and suggested abovethread that at the Wedding of Cana, Mary had crossed into the man territory to talk to Jesus and had thereby committed a sin. Are you suggesting that Mary was now in error for not crossing into man territory in their traveling group to check and make sure Jesus was where he was supposed to be? 🙂
 
nowadays

Even if one goes back to the '30s and '40s, kidas had way more freedom… it makes sense for one to look at this through the ‘helicopter parent’ lens that almost everything in our society is looked at, but things were different back then. Also, as manhood was reached at 13 in this time, Jesus was nearly a man in the view of his parents… a shorter life expectancy lead to children having to grow up faster.
 
I understand your strong opinions. The hurdle is shifting from seeing as obstacles those things which we Catholics hold sacred, to seeing them as the Divine Helps they were intended to be. The Church, the Sacraments, the saints- all of these actually provide more proof that God loves us and is committed to not abandoning us. But that only becomes clear when one can get beyond the hang ups they may have learned to accept as fact- such as caricatures of the Catholic faith which this post unfortunately represents.

That’s a big jump for a non-denominational, even bigger for someone who has grown up hearing the same old junk about Catholics.
 
LumberJack said:
‘Tarried behind’ is ‘Wandered off’… AND HE WAS 12! For a mother not to notice for a whole day her 12 year old had wandered off is surely questionable? Nowadays she would be prosecuted for neglect and he would be with social services.
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She thought Jesus was with Joseph; he thought Jesus was with Mary. That’s not “neglect” – it happens even to this day. It’s even more likely, as you point out, in a society that separates men from women. 😉
 
LumberJack said:
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midori:
Can you give an example of three things she did incorrectly?
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  1. She lost Jesus when he was 12.
  2. She broke with tradition at the wedding in Cana when women and men would have been segregated by approaching Jesus who says ‘What the heck are you doing here? I’m not ready to leave yet’:
    And when they wanted wine, the mother of Jesus saith unto him, They have no wine.
    Jesus saith unto her, Woman, what have I to do with thee? mine hour is not yet come.
  3. She’s a woman
    Simon Peter said to them, “Make Mary leave us, for females don’t deserve life.”
    Jesus said, “Look, I will guide her to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every female who makes herself male will enter the kingdom of Heaven.”     (Gospel of Thomas 114)
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  1. She didn’t lose Jesus. She trusted Jesus to be with the caravan. At 12 He was old enough to be responsible. He chose to stay in the Temple without telling her. This is not a failure on her part, and surely not a sin.
  2. What’s your source for the claim that men and women couldn’t mingle at a wedding party? And when Jesus said “My hour has not yet come”, He most certainly did not mean “I’m not ready to leave yet.” He meant “It’s not time for me to be performing public miracles yet”. And even so, He did perform the miracle for her. Beyond that ‘What the heck are you doing here?’ sounds like He was being disrespectful to her. Which would not happen because He was without sin and would not have been rude to his mother.
  3. You seem to be saying that it’s a sin to be a woman, which is nonsense. Also you’re quoting the Gospel of Thomas, which is not Scripture and has never been treated by the Church as Scripture, and in any case says things that directly contradict the teachings of the Church. “Females don’t deserve life”, indeed. :roll_eyes:
 
Jesusislord said:
I am here to debate on why Mother mary is so special.
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This is not a subject that to me as a Catholic is up for “debate”. Your phrasing of the query is just plain disrespectful to Our Blessed Mother, whom I love, and who leads us to Jesus THROUGH herself.

Your thread title is also disrespectful. We do not “take our eyes off Jesus” to focus on Mary. When focusing on Mary we are focusing on Jesus THROUGH Mary, always. The focus does not stop at Mary, it goes THROUGH Mary to God. She is our most powerful intercessor and mediatrix for God’s grace. I hope this fully explains the matter for you as I don’t think it’s necessary to add anything else.

Edited to add, if you seriously think “Jesus is Lord”, then what makes you think he would approve of you trashing His Beloved Mother in this way? Sad.
 
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I agree, but he was also a God. I don’t know what the term for that would be.
 
Yes, but its all gradual… My 20 year old sister can’t drink alcohol on her own by law, but my parents still buy her wine when the family is out for dinner
 
And your point is?

Mary went to Jesus out of concern for her relatives. Considering that Jewish culture at that time was a culture of providing for your guests, the bride and groom’s family would be disgraced.
 
You’re comparing Apples and oranges, though… No one could be sued for Jesus’ staying behind in Jerusalem…
 
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