MARY, I DON’T UNDERSTAND MY CHILD ANY MORE. HOW DID YOU DO IT?
In the Gospel, Mary asks an anguished question. The account says she and Joseph do not understand the answer: a passage to read without idealising families.
You imagined a path. Perhaps you never even told him all of it, but it was there: studies, friends, faith, the way of living that seemed good for him. Then your son begins making choices, and you can no longer understand where he is going.
Loving him does not automatically give you the key to his thoughts. The Gospel contains a scene in which Mary and Joseph, too, search, ask questions and are left without immediate understanding.
A question filled with anguish
In Luke 2:41–52, twelve-year-old Jesus stays in Jerusalem while his parents begin the journey home. When they notice he is missing, they return to look for him. They find him in the temple among the teachers.
Mary asks why he has done this and tells him of their anguish. Jesus answers by referring to his Father. The text states that his parents do not understand his words; it then recounts their return to Nazareth and Mary treasuring what has happened.
It isn’t a recipe for handling an argument
This passage reveals Jesus’s unique relationship with the Father. It does not automatically make every teenager’s decision right, nor suggest that parents give up responsibility and protection.
In Redemptoris Mater, John Paul II reads it within Mary’s journey of faith. For us, it can open a reflection: closeness and love do not always mean being able to understand everything at once.
Treasuring things does not mean stopping the conversation
You can ask a question without already knowing the answer you want. You can name a specific concern: a behaviour, a situation, a risk. That is different from reducing your entire child to the sentence that came out during an argument.
And you can listen even when what you hear unsettles you. That does not mean approving everything. It gives a conversation the chance to exist without immediately becoming a trial of the person before you.
Parents can be unsure too
If you have responsibility for raising a child, seeking another perspective is not surrender. In a dangerous situation, care requires practical action, not waiting in prayer alone. In everyday distance, however, there may be room to get to know each other again.
Perhaps today you can begin: ‘This worries me. Before I tell you everything I think, I’d like to understand how you are experiencing it.’ Then allow time for an answer. A silence may need a little patience, too.
Your question can enter prayer too: Mary, help me seek my child in order to meet him, not simply to bring him back onto the path I had imagined.
