The answer of Jesus is instructive: "I must be about my Father's business." There was another besides his mother to whom he owed allegiance. He was the Son of God as well as the son of Mary. Parents should remember this always in dealing with their children,--their children are more God's than theirs.
It is interesting to notice what follows that remarkable experience of mother and child in the temple. Jesus returned with his mother to the lowly Nazareth home, and was subject to her. In recognizing his relation to God as his heavenly Father, he did not become any less the child of his earthly mother. He loved his mother no less because he loved God more. Obedience to the Father in heaven did not lead him to reject the rule of earthly parenthood. He went back to the quiet home, and for eighteen years longer found his Father's business in the common round of lowly tasks which made up the daily life of such a home.
It would be intensely interesting to read the story of mother and son during those years, but it has not been written for us. They must have been years of wondrous beauty. Few things in this world are more beautiful than such friendships as one sometimes sees between mother and son. The boy is more the lover than the child. The two enter into the closest companionship. A sacred and inviolable intimacy is formed between them. The boy opens all his heart to his mother, telling her everything; and she, happy woman, knows how to be a boy's mother and to keep a mother's place without ever startling or checking the shy confidences, or causing him to desire to hide anything from her. The boy whispers his inmost thoughts to his mother, and listens to her wise and gentle counsels with loving eagerness and childish faith--
"Her face his holy skies; The air he breathes his mother's breath, His stars his mother's eyes."
Not always are mother and boy such friends. Some mothers do not think it worth while to give the time and thought necessary to enter into a boy's life in such confidential way. But we may be sure that between the mother of Jesus and her son the most tender and intimate friendship existed. He opened his soul to her; and she gave him not a mother's love only, but also a mother's wise counsel and strong, inspiring sympathy.
It is almost certain that sorrow entered the Nazareth home soon after the visit to Jerusalem. Joseph is not mentioned again; and it is supposed that he died, leaving Mary a widow. On Jesus, as the eldest son, the care of the mother now rested. Knowing the deep love of his heart and his wondrous gentleness, it is easy for us to understand with what unselfish devotion he cared for his mother after she was widowed. He had learned the carpenter's trade; and day after day, early and late, he wrought with his hands to provide for her wants. Very sacred must have been the friendship of mother and son in those days. Her gentleness, quietness, hopefulness, humility, and prayerfulness, must have wrought themselves into the very tissue of his character as he moved through the days in such closeness. Unto the end he carried in his soul the benedictions of his mother's life.
The thirty silent years of preparation closed, and Jesus went out to begin his public ministry. The first glimpse we have of the mother is at the wedding at Cana. Jesus was there too. The wine failed, and Mary went to Jesus about the matter. "They have no wine," she said. Evidently she was expecting some manifesting of supernatural power. All the years since his birth she had been carrying in her heart a great wonder of expectation. Now he had been baptized, and had entered upon his work as the Messiah. Had not the time come for miracle-working?