Summary
In this final talk of the series, Mark Hartfiel guides us through the fourth and fifth Joyful mysteries: the Presentation and the Finding in the Temple.. These mysteries reveal both the sorrows and the consolations of the spiritual life and remind us that the Rosary is a lifelong path of seeking, finding, and offering ourselves to God.
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Reflective Study Guide Questions
“The Rosary mystically transports us to Mary’s side as she is busy watching over the human growth of Christ in the home of Nazareth. This enables her to train us and to mold us with the same care, until Christ is ‘fully formed’ in us.”
Pope St. John Paul II
1. What word or phrases from the account of the Presentation stood out to you the most? How does that word or phrase help you better understand this mystery of the Rosary?
2. What can Mary teach us about suffering? What does Mary and Jesus’ suffering mean for you?
3. What word or phrases from the account of the Finding of Jesus in the Temple stood out to you the most? How does that word or phrase help you better understand this mystery of the Rosary?
4. What can Mary and Jesus teach you from their responses to the events in the account of the Finding of Jesus in the Temple? How do you respond to anxiety? How do you respond to the gentle promptings of Mary in your life? What do these lessons mean for your life?
Text: The Third Joyful Mystery: The Rosary: The Presentation & The Finding of Jesus in the Temple
Hi, I’m Mark Hartfiel, and we have been making our way through the Rosary, the Joyful Mysteries, as a way to contemplate the key moments in the life of Christ. In this last reflection, we’re going to enter into a contemplation of the last two Joyful Mysteries: the presentation and the finding in the temple.
Opening Prayer
Let’s begin in prayer. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy Name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, amen. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen.
Simeon’s Encounter With Jesus
The 4th Joyful Mystery takes us into Jerusalem for the presentation in the temple. Scripture tells us, “According to the law of Moses, they brought him, Jesus, up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord.” Now, the Holy Family, they were devout Jews following the Mosaic law, which prescribes that, “Every male that opens the womb shall be consecrated to the Lord.” But for Mary and Joseph, this is much more than going through the rubrics to follow the law. To consecrate means to set aside for holy use, that they are giving their only son to God, that God, He is yours, consecrated, set aside for you. If we have the spiritual eyes to see it, the presentation is already a foreshadowing of the cross. St. John Paul II tells us that, “In the midst of all of the joy, the 4th and 5th Joyful Mysteries point to the drama that is yet to come.”
And so when they enter into the temple area, they meet Simeon, a righteous and devout Jew. It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he shall not see death before he has seen the Savior. And when Mary and Joseph brought in the child Jesus, Simeon blessed God. He took the infant Jesus up into his arms, he gazes into his eyes and he speaks a prophetic word. “Lord, now let your servant depart in peace. For mine eyes have seen thy salvation which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples,” that his entire life is fulfilled before his very eyes. His long weight is over. His eyes have seen salvation, and Simeon is satisfied. Let your servant go in peace. In other words, I can die in peace now. This is Simeon’s moment of encounter with the living God.
And Jesus, still just an infant, He’s not yet walking on water or calming the wind and the waves, and yet Simeon really sees Him. Simeon experiences Him, the Savior, the Redeemer, the Glory of Israel. He has an encounter with Jesus, and an encounter with Jesus is a taste of heaven itself. Seeing Jesus is enough for Simeon.
And I pray that you and I can be more like Simeon, and Jesus, you are all I need. Simeon then turns his gaze towards Our Lady and he says, “A sword shall pierce your heart, your own soul.” He says this, “A sword will pierce through your own soul that the thoughts out of many hearts may be revealed.” A sword will pierce through your own soul also, that Mary’s soul never was physically pierced by a sword, but Jesus’ was. John Paul II always understood this very well. What Jesus suffered physically, Mary suffered mystically. There was one sword that pierced through two hearts because their hearts were united. The sacred heart of Christ and the immaculate heart of Mary share a communion of love beyond comprehension. The two, the greatest love, the greatest love that two people have ever shared with one another in the history of the world, Jesus and Mary. Jesus and Mary shared a perfect bond of charity. There was no sin. There’s nothing to break or to make their love for one another imperfect.
The Pieta
The sacred heart and the immaculate heart are perfectly united in love. In a sense, her heart was pierced from this moment of the presentation all the way to Calvary, and at Calvary it reaches its fulfillment. As our Lord expires, their two hearts are pierced, and then He’s taken down from the cross. We have this beautiful moment when Jesus is taken down from the cross, captured in Michelangelo’s sculpture, “The Pieta.” And if you look at “The Pieta,” if you look at Our Lady’s hands, one of her hands is holding the body of her son and the other hand is out. It’s open. It’s as if Our Lady is making an offering. Saint Mother Teresa once said, “If you want to be a saint, take what He gives and give what He takes.”
Our Lady perfectly fulfills this. She takes, or rather she receives what He gives at the annunciation, and then she gives what He takes at the cross. We read, you know, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son,” and so together with God the Father, Mary offers her son for the sins of the world. It’s surely, first and foremost, the Father’s initiative and the father’s offering, and Our Lady is given the dignity to participate in this offering. This is the mystery of the presentation, that Mary’s already making an offering of her son to God. The offering she makes at the presentation of the temple is the same offering she makes at Calvary. The fullness of this offering becomes manifest at Calvary. And we know that one of Mary’s titles, she has many, many titles, one of her many titles is Queen of Martyrs.
I mean, think about this. She’s the martyr of all martyrs because she experienced a real mystical death. It’s worth mentioning also that of The Seven Sorrows of Our Lady, three of those Seven Sorrows take place during the Joyful Mysteries, right? So we have this prophecy of Simeon, where her heart’s going to be pierced, the flight to Egypt, and the loss of the Christ child. Within all of this, there’s a great mystery at hand. We know this, that besides Jesus Christ, God saved only one person from the stain of sin, his own mother, right? And this is very fitting. She’s his masterpiece. In this same kind of line of thinking, if God saves her from her sin, why not save her from suffering? And I think that’s a fair question. Why Lord? Why all this pain? Why all the suffering? With the eyes of faith, we can see that our Lord allows her to participate in his suffering, that Mary receives the dignity to share in his suffering. But to what end? This hardly feels like a gift. She shares in his suffering to share in his victory, to share in his glory. You see, our Lord doesn’t take our suffering away this side of heaven. He didn’t even take it away from his own mother. Instead, He helps us to discover joy even in the midst of our suffering. He brings meaning to our suffering. He brings about redemption and sanctification. In a word, He makes it count. And Christ promises his disciples, “You will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy.” And so this is our comfort, this is our hope, that our sorrow, our mourning, our mourning and weeping in this Valley of Tears, that we pray in every Rosary, will turn into joy. It’s very safe to say that the Holy family, in the midst of the suffering, the Holy Family was the most joyful family in all of history. They experienced a peace and a joy that surpasses all understanding. And so we must be ambassadors, we must be witnesses of a joy that transcends the tribulation. “And when they had performed everything according to the law of the Lord, the Holy family, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, returned to Galilee, to their own city Nazareth. And the child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom: and the favor of God was upon him.”
Finding Christ in the Temple
This concludes the 4th Joyful Mystery. The presentation in the temple. And the Holy Family returns to Nazareth, and we won’t hear anything from them for 12 years other than the fact that they return to Jerusalem once per year for the feast of Passover. This jumps us ahead to the 5th Joyful Mystery, the finding of Christ in the temple. And we know the story, right? Assuming Jesus to be within the caravan that they were traveling with, they left him behind.
And we read in the scriptures, “After three days, which is a bit foreshadowing, they found him in the temple sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. And all who heard him were amazed at His understanding and His answers.”
Enter into this scene, that Jesus on the verge of His adolescence is preaching and teaching in the temple to the scholars, that Jesus was only 12 years old yet He’s already blowing people’s minds. Mary says to Jesus, “Behold, your father and I have been looking for you anxiously.” I’d like us to consider and contemplate this word, anxiety. This is a word we hear about at length in our day, and many of us, myself included, have experienced anxiety.
The first point I want to make is that Mary and Joseph were anxious. These are the two greatest saints in heaven. The one immaculately conceived. She has no sins. She has no stain of sin. She experiences anxiety. You’re not alone in your anxiety. And next, the cause of their their anxiety. They lost Jesus for three days. They had Him, they lost Him. They went seeking after Him, and they found Him once again. The very moment we lose focus of Jesus, when He is, so to speak, out of our sight, we begin to experience anxiety. And when this happens, and it will happen, this is the key, immediately turn and go back and seek after Him, like Mary and Joseph. And seek Him where? In the temple, in the church. That Christ challenges us to overcome anxiety with faith and trust in the goodness of the Father. He commands us, “Do not be anxious.”
Why? Typically, anxiety is forward-looking. Worrying about tomorrow steals our strength for today. It wastes the grace given in this very moment. Anxiety is a thief of joy. Another passage I’d like to contemplate, another word in this passage that, it’s worthy to contemplate, is the word, father, right? It opens us a new mystery. Mary says to Jesus, “Your father and I have been looking for you,” referring to Saint Joseph. And Jesus responds, “I must be in my Father’s house,” referring to God the Father and the temple. And then we have two verses later. “Jesus goes home to Nazareth to his earthly father’s house.” So which is it? What conversation happened in between? What eye contact or nonverbal communication took place? We do know this much. Jesus responds to Mary’s gentle promptings. It’s reminiscent of Cana, right? Mary intercedes on behalf of the couple. They have no wine. Jesus says, “My hour has not yet come.” She says, “Do whatever he tells you.” Jesus performs the miracle. In the finding of the temple, Mary calls Jesus home, out of his Father’s house, the temple, and into his father’s house, Joseph’s home in Nazareth. How can this be? Well, because God the Father and Saint Joseph are his Father’s house, the church and the domestic church. This is a great mystery. “He went down with them to Nazareth and he was obedient to them. And his mother kept all these things in her heart.” This is a wonderful mystery worth contemplating.
When Jesus leaves the temple in Jerusalem, the temple goes with him because Jesus is the temple. Jesus is God. Therefore, the home of Nazareth becomes the first domestic church. “Jesus went down with them and came to Nazareth and was obedient to them.” So simultaneously, Jesus lives in perfect obedience to God the Father, always, and in perfect obedience to Mary and Joseph. What this means is that Mary and Joseph never led him in any way contrary to the will of God. There was a perfect harmony between the two.
I’d like to conclude with this last thought from John Paul II. He says, “The Rosary mystically transports us to Mary’s side as she is busy watching over the human growth of Christ in the home of Nazareth.” That’s so profound. I want to read it one more time. “The Rosary mystically transports us to Mary’s side as she is busy watching over the human growth of Christ in the home of Nazareth.”
Thank you for allowing me to journey with you through the Joyful Mysteries this Advent. I pray that no matter what you’re going through in your life, that you may experience this super abundance of joy this Christmas season, and you wait and joyful anticipation for the coming of Christ. May He be born again and again in each of your hearts. May your life and may my life become a Rosary, a contemplation of Jesus, together with Our Lady and with Saint Joseph.
Closing Prayer
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death, amen. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen.
About Mark Hartfiel
Mark Hartfiel is the Vice President of Paradisus Dei and host of the Mysteries of the Rosary video series featured on EWTN, Formed, and Wild Goose TV. Mark is currently the developer of content for the That Man is You! men’s program which is hosted in 1,000 parishes throughout the world.