Who can measure what must have been Mary's joy and relief when she saw her Son sitting in the midst of the doctors, listening to their teaching! She "wondered"; she was perplexed; and then it was that she uttered her fifth word. It was a word of reproach rather than of joy, though it was joy that caused it, and the reproach was full of tenderness. St Bernardine calls this word, _flamma amoris saporantis_, "a flame of savouring or relishing love," because, he says, it belongs to love to "distinguish and discern, and, as it were, taste the divine effects and qualities of that which is loved." It was her love which made Mary _savour_ the intense pain caused by the absence of her Son and by the anxiety of her spouse. The flame of love within her enabled her to _relish_ both the love and the pain. Mary does not try to conceal her pain--that is not the outcome of true love. She says straight out what she is feeling, with that holy familiarity to which her love gives her a right: "Son, why hast Thou done so to us? Behold, Thy father and I have sought Thee sorrowing." Why? None knew better than He what the agony of those three days had been to His Mother, and He could have prevented it. Why, then, has He done so? Because He was beginning the principle which He carried out all through. He was the "Man of Sorrows," and she was the "Mother of Sorrows," and He would not spare her one drop in the cup of suffering. He knew its value too well, and His love for her was too great. When we have to undergo suffering that seems so unnecessary and that could (perhaps we think) with a little forethought have been so easily avoided, instead of allowing ourselves to give way to discontent, and regrets, and even rebellion, how much better it would be to say: Yes, it is quite true, JESUS could have prevented this, but He is treating me in some degree as He treated His Blessed Mother, not saving me the pain and trouble and inconvenience, but letting me have the opportunity of sanctifying my soul and of gaining greater merit. "Why hast Thou done so?" And He answers: "Did you not know that I must be about My Father's business?" By His answer He prepares His Mother for the future; He raises her above the human in Him to the Divine; He announces Himself, though obscurely, to the Doctors as the Messias; He teaches the great lesson of detachment, and shows that even our best natural affections must be supernaturalised. "My Father's business"--that must ever come first. "For this came I into the world," (St John xviii. 37), and I _must_ be about it, even if by so doing I give pain to those dearest to me.