The Third Sorrow: the Loss of the Christ Child

When they saw him, they were astonished, and his mother said to him: “Son, why have you done this to us? Your father and I have been searching for you with great anxiety.” (Luke 2:48)

In the Third Sorrow, the faithful join in spirit with the sorrowful Virgin, as she returned to Jerusalem to search for her missing Son. On her way back to Nazareth from a pilgrimage to the Holy City, she had assumed that the 12 year old Jesus was travelling among their extended family. When she and St Joseph realised that he was not, they sped back to Jerusalem in a panic.

With St Joseph, Our Lady spent three days in extreme distress, scouring the city and worried to death that she could not find her beloved Son. Eventually, they discovered him in the court of the Temple, discussing religion with the learned men of the day. Imagine how relieved she must have been!

Pope Francis observed: “Mary brought into the world Jesus, Hope of humanity; she nourished Him, made Him grow, followed Him, letting herself be the first to be shaped by the Word of God… This unique communion with the Word of God does not, however, save her the effort of a demanding “apprenticeship”.

He continued: “The experience of twelve-year-old Jesus going missing during the annual pilgrimage to Jerusalem frightens Mary to the point that she also speaks for Joseph as they take their son back: “Son, why have you done this to us? Your father and I have been looking for you with great anxiety” (Luke 2:48). Mary and Joseph felt the pain of parents with a missing child: they both thought that Jesus was in the caravan with their relatives, but after not seeing Him for an entire day, they began the search that would lead them to retrace their steps. Upon returning to the Temple, they discover that He who, in their eyes, until a short time before, was still a child to protect, suddenly seems grown up, capable now of getting involved in discussions on the Scriptures, of holding His own with the teachers of the Law.”

The Greek word St Luke used in Luke 2:48, here translated “great anxiety” is odunaó. More literally, this means ‘torment’ or ‘agony’ (cf Luke 16:24-25). So the Virgin and St Joseph were not just deeply worried and stressed; for three days they were actually tortured with grief.

This beautiful gold-leaf mural, created with oil paint, is found within the sanctuary of Our Lady of Loretto, Musselburgh. It was the work of a Scottish artist, George Duffie, painted between 1944-1947. Curiously, the mural underlines the separation of Christ from his parents, with the Virgin and St Joseph found at the other end of the sanctuary wall from the image of Jesus in the Temple (pictured below).

Prayer:
O Sorrowful Mother, I contemplate now the bitter grief which engulfed you when you lost your beloved Son in Jerusalem. I ask you, through the tears and pain of those three days, to obtain for me such light that I may never lose my God, but may find him once and for ever — and above all at the hour of my death. Amen.

Contemplate the full image below, or move to the Fourth Sorrow>