Where was Mary?
Going through the Gospel of Luke this past summer, I stumbled upon a thought. I’m sure I’m not the first to discover this. The Church Fathers have so many excellent realizations, and make so many connections with the Scriptures, that I just assume one of them have thought it first. I’m sure a reader will let me know who, and where, a Church Father has made this connection. Still, even with ideas that have been discovered before, the feeling when the Holy Spirit leads you to a realization is uplifting. I want to share this connection with you.
At the end of Luke’s Gospel, we read about several people who go in search of Jesus. Absent from these groups, however, is someone that almost everyone would expect to be concerned with Jesus’s whereabouts: Mary, his mother. Yet, we do not read about her following his body to the tomb. We do not read about her going to prepare his body with spices on Sunday. We do not read about any concern, angst, or worry on her part on where her son is, what has happened to him, or where his body might be locate. While Scripture does not explicitly answer these questions for us, I think a careful reading does indicate an answer.
Luke’s Bookends
St. Luke likes to bookend stories in his Gospel. Events from the beginning are repeated at the end. People, names, representatives, and even material items reappear at the end, with a similar context but new meaning. Seeing these bookends helps us recontextualize both narratives. This is similar to the Old Testament stories which are recreated, reenacted, and fulfilled in the New Testament. For Luke’s bookends, they force the reader to see the entire Gospel of Luke as pointing to its end, and its end is better appreciated with the narrative framing of the beginning.
Just one example of this is the connection between Jesus’s nativity and his burial. Infant Jesus is wrapped in swaddling cloths and laid in a manger. Luke also specifically mentions Joseph and Mary’s presence (for which there isn’t a need, since we already could assume they would be there). This is bookended with Jesus being wrapped in a linen shroud and laid in a tomb, specifically by a different Joseph (Arimathea). The many connections between the Infancy Narrative and the Passion/Burial are better left for Advent and Lent, though. The story I want to discuss now is from the Resurrection and the most unique narrative in the Gospels.
Losing Jesus
Let’s look at the beginning of Luke, then. In Luke 2:41-52, we read a truly unique story. Only Luke includes information about Jesus’s younger years, between infancy and adulthood. Go ahead and either read the story in your own Bible or click the link above to read it online, then I’ll give a summary.
At the time of Passover, Jesus (age 12) and his parents went to Jerusalem for the feast. After the feast Mary and Joseph left, but did not realize Jesus had not come with them. For safety concerns, it was common for people, especially pilgrims, to travel in large groups to deter attacks. So it’s not odd that Mary and Joseph could assume Jesus might be somewhere in the group, which probably also contained extended family members.
When Joseph and Mary discovered Jesus was not with the caravan, they returned to Jerusalem. They searched for three days and finally found him in the Temple. Mary and Joseph questioned what Jesus was doing, to which Jesus said “Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?“ This is an idiom which means “Did you not know that I must be about my Father’s business?“ Jesus then returns home. Luke finishes the story telling us that Mary “treasured up all these things in her heart.“
Making Connections
Let’s go back through the story, and see how it connects to Jesus’s Passion, Death, and Resurrection.
First, where was the Holy Family going to? Jerusalem, specifically at the time of Passover. Where does Jesus and his family of disciples, including Mary, go at the end of Luke? To Jerusalem, specifically at the time of Passover.
Next, notice how long Mary and Joseph look for Jesus: three days. How long does Jesus remain in the tomb? Three days. Also notice that Mary and Joseph are pilgrims in the first story, whereas the “women who had come with him from Galilee“ are pilgrims in the second story, as they make a religious journey to his tomb to properly perform the burial services.
There are even specific words reused in the Resurrection narrative. Jesus asks “why were you looking for me,“ “looking“ being the same word used in Luke 24:5-6 when the women have come to the tomb looking for Jesus, and two men/angels ask them “why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen.“
In both cases, at the same time and place, people lose Jesus. They are not aware of where he really is. They search for him in vain. After three days, he is “found“ (the first time physically, the second time the true Jesus, the Messiah and Suffering Servant who will rise again, is found).
The Mysterious Case of Missing Mary
One question I have always had is where is Mary, Jesus’s mother, in the story. Let’s look at who was at the tomb. Let’s go from the smallest to the largest group. To be clear, these aren’t contradictions. If I tell my kids a story about a date my wife and I had, I might tell them “your mother and I went to a play.“ If I’m telling the story to my parents, but wanting to emphasize how many people were there, I might say “my wife, I, and a huge group of our friends went to a play.“
So, John focuses on Mary Magdalene. (John 20:1). Matthew speaks of Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, who we know from Mark to be the mother of James (not the mother of Jesus). (Matthew 28:1). This might seem odd, but Mary was probably the most popular name. So they often had to identify the person by some other identifier. So “the mother of…“ helps clue us in to who we are speaking about. Mark also says that Salome went with them. Luke puts them all into the category of “the women who had come with [Jesus] from Galilee,“ which also does not seem to include Jesus’s mother. (Luke 23:55-24:1).
If I died today, you better believe my mother is visiting my grave first chance she gets. He’s going to be there for the wake, for the funeral, and for putting me into the ground. Yet we don’t see Mary present at the tomb. Scripture does not record her following people to place Jesus in the tomb, nor does Scripture speak about her journey to the tomb on Sunday. But why would Mary, who was at the feet of the cross while Jesus died, not present to go to his tomb?
About My Father’s Business
It’s significant that Luke tells us that Mary “treasured up all these things in her heart.“ It specifically and pointedly places her in that story.
So why was Mary not looking for Jesus on Sunday? Because she had already learned her lesson about that. She remembered what had already happened 21 years before. Mary did not need to go and find Jesus because she already knew where he was and what he was doing: he was “about [his] Father’s business.“ The Father’s business was the Resurrection, defeating death, and providing the ultimate and final unity from God to man. Mary may not have known specifically and exactly what this would look like. But I fully believe that Luke is telling us that Mary knew something would happen, and that it would happen exactly as God willed it to happen. Mary knew it was futile to go and look for Jesus, because Jesus was finishing the work of the Father.
Luke’s Gospel begins and ends with people searching for Jesus: Mary and Joseph finding him in the Temple after three days, and the women seeking him at the tomb after three days. Both stories reveal that he is not where they expected, but exactly where his Father willed him to be. And in the mysterious silence of Mary’s absence at the tomb, we glimpse a deeper faith: she no longer needed to search, for she already trusted her Son was about His Father’s business.
