The micro events of the finding of the Christ in the Old Temple of God by Our Lady and St Joseph perfectly mirror the macro events of Church history of the final conversion of the Jews, as they “find the Messiah” in the New Temple of God, the Catholic Church.
Behold, the Jewish People many times communed with God in the Holy Place, Jerusalem. But when the fullness of time had been reached (12? 12 is completeness, 12 Tribes, 12 Apostles, 12 hours in a day, 12 notes in natural music derived by fifths, 12 months in a year, when Jesus is “12 years old”, the fullness of childhood), the Jews experienced in Jerusalem, the ultimate pilgrimage: the Passion, Death and Resurrection of the Messiah. The Messiah would never leave that place in presence. Rather, His Presence in His Church by the Spirit would stay there and at the same time spread everywhere in the world, in all nations and tongues, by the infinite presence of the Eucharist. But this Jesus, who never left Jerusalem, but only transformed it into the New Jerusalem, though He remained there forever, the Jews did not know it, just as Mary and Joseph did not know that Jesus had remained behind in Jerusalem.
And in less than a generation, they departed from that place, for there was no longer any room for them. The pagan Power had expelled them. They went out from Jerusalem and wondered in the diaspora, just as Mary and Joseph, and their caravan, departed from Jerusalem. But after a while, they realized the Messiah had not come, He was not with them. They began to look for Him. They looked for him for one day--for one evening and one morning, for one phase of spiritual darkness, and one phase of spiritual light for the true people of God, the Church.
For, the first day of the Church started with the night of pagan Rome, and her brutal persecutions. Then, in Constantine, the sun began to rise. The Catholic Church progressively converted the continent and in the Middle Ages, in the age of Faith, the sun was at midday, the height of Catholic influence: Scholasticism, Sacred Art, Philosophy, Christian Europe.
Then, with the great heretical rebellion, the sun of Catholic Christendom began to set: Protestantism, the last of the supernatural light, then the mere natural twilight of only reason, the so-called Enlightenment.
Finally, in the twentieth century, the night fell: horrifying atheistic materialism in the East, and decadent, arrogant, frivolous, relativistic hedonistic materialism in the West. The night is back, it is the next day of the Church.
And what happened as that sun set into godless apostasy in the latter half of the twentieth century? Behold, those who had been looking for the Messiah in the outer regions of the caravan, returned HOME, returned to JERUSALEM, just as after the first day, Mary and Joseph returned to Jerusalem to continue looking for Jesus.
This People, having returned to Jerusalem since the late 1960’s, are STILL looking for the Messiah in sorrow and distress, this, again, being the SECOND day.
Soon, we are told, by most private but approved prophets of the Catholic Church, a great tribulation shall bring a light again: the Gentiles will repent, Christians will be reunited, and a great period of light, of peace, shall dawn on man: Our Lady’s Immaculate Heart will Triumph. Hence, the sunrise of the second day of the Church is imminent.
Then, the same prophets tell us, mostly, that after this great final light within human history, man shall grow lax, and forget the apocalyptic lesson he learned. He shall begin to fall away into the final night, the night of the third day, the GREAT apostasy.
And behold, Public Revelation tells us that this same People looking so anxiously for the Anointed One will finally find Him and recognize Him in this last darkness of history, the great apostasy. But they will not find Him in the OLD Temple, as Mary and Joseph did, but in the NEW Temple, which is the Catholic Church! And will they not say in anguish to the Messiah, “Messiah, all this time, for three great AGES, we have sought thee in sorrow and anguish.” And the Christ shall answer them and say, “Did you not know that I would be in My Father’s HOUSE (the NEW Temple, the Catholic Church), and about His BUSINESS (REDEEMING THE GENTILES)?”