A Rosary Meditation … The Fifth Joyful Mystery, the Finding in the Temple. Jesus got “lost”. Of course He knew right where He was and exactly what He was doing, but Mary and Joseph didn’t know that. So they had to go looking, with all the near-panic and worry that went with a lost Christ Child. It occurs to me that even Godly children can be a headache for their parents. Do you think Mary and Joseph were worried? They lived in a country over run with foreign invaders, under what amounted to martial law. They knew what it was like to be second class citizens in their own native land. (As an aside that I feel obligated to share, with being second class citizens in your own homeland in mind, you might like to take a drive through a U.S. reservation sometime. They don’t all have casinos.) They saw and experienced first hand the treatment that came with these circumstances. And then of course there were robbers, not to mention people, some of them their own people, who would steal a person if they could and sell them into slavery. Then, as now, there were accidents. People get sick suddenly, they get hit by cars. People no doubt got rundown by chariots. The list goes on. Were they worried? You better know they were. Being human goes right along with being a saint and having the faith it takes to move mountains. Which means that rather than set on our hands while wringing them in worry we go do what needs to be done anyway. Like Mary and Joseph did. It’s ok to be human, and its normal, up to a point, to experience things like worry. If we didn’t have emotions and reactions like this there would be something wrong with us and it wouldn’t be healthy any more than going off the deep end is healthy. So we’re human, which means there will be things we’ll need to work through. But for a Catholic working through these things in faith the “working through” always does one thing specifically. Or it can if we’ll let it. We’ll always end up finding Jesus in the Temple. Because while we’re looking and “working through” with faith, even if there’s some worry and panic involved, He’s waiting for us.
Today … St. Cornelius was Roman priest. Cornelius was elected Pope to succeed Fabian in an election delayed fourteen months by Decius’ persecution of the Christians. The main issue of his pontificate was the treatment to be accorded Christians who had apostasized during the persecution. He condemned those confessors who were lax in not demanding penance of these Christians and supported St. Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage, against Novatus and his dupe, Felicissimus, whom he had set up as an antibishop to Cyprian, when Novatus came to Rome. On the other hand, he also denounced the Rigorists, headed by Novatian, a Roman priest, who declared that the Church could not pardon the lapsi (the lapsed Christians), and declared himself Pope – the first antipope. The two extremes eventually joined forces, and the Novatian movement had quite a following in the East. Meanwhile, Cornelius proclaimed that the Church had the authority and the power to forgive repentant lapsi and could readmit them to the sacraments and the Church after they had performed proper penances. A synod of Western bishops in Rome in October 251 upheld Cornelius, condemned the teachings of Novatian, and excommunicated him and his followers. When persecutions of the Christians started up again in 253 under Emperor Gallus, Cornelius was exiled to Centum Cellae (Civita Vecchia), where he died a martyr, probably of hardships he was forced to endure. If the life of any saint ever sounded like fertile ground for drama this one’s does. But he worked through it all with faith, didn’t he. And Who was it that he found at the end of his journey?
The Path to Sainthood … Never stop looking for Love.
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