3. The loss of the child Jesus.
It is easy for me to think of Mary as always having had knowledge of her Son and that somehow this made it “easier” for her. Yet the loss of Jesus in the temple shows us that she did not always have that knowledge. She too suffered when she did not understand what He was doing and when she could not find Jesus. Her son was hidden from her and this brought her spiritual darkness. As Christians, we suffer a loss of God when we sin.
To have him and then lose him by our own doing is a great suffering for us. Mary, although without sin, also knew the pain of losing her Son, and it is she who teaches us to go in search of Him. “Mary lost Jesus only in a mystical darkness of the soul, not in the moral blackness of an evil heart,” says Sheen. “But she does teach us that, when we lose God, we must not wait for Him to come back. We must go out in search of Him; and, to the joy of every sinner, she knows where he can be found!”
