Lent to the Lord: The Child Samuel in the House of God and the Child Jesus in the Temple
Old Testament: 1 Kings 1:24, 27-28; 1 Kings 2:26
And after she had weaned him, she carried him with her, with three calves, and three bushels of flour, and a bottle of wine, and she brought him to the house of the Lord in Silo. Now the child was as yet very young: ... For this child did I pray, and the Lord hath granted me my petition, which I asked of him. Therefore I also have lent him to the Lord all the days of his life, he shall be lent to the Lord. And they adored the Lord there. And Anna prayed, and said: ... But the child Samuel advanced, and grew on, and pleased both the Lord and men.
Old Testament, also: 1 Kings 3:10, 19
And the Lord came and stood: and he called, as he had called the other times: Samuel, Samuel. And Samuel said: Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth. ... And Samuel grew, and the Lord was with him, and not one of his words fell to the ground.
New Testament: Luke 2:22, 43, 46, 49, 51-52
And after the days of her purification, according to the law of Moses, were accomplished, they carried him to Jerusalem, to present him to the Lord: ... the child Jesus remained in Jerusalem; and his parents knew it not. ... And it came to pass, that, after three days, they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors, hearing them, and asking them questions. ... And he said to them: How is it that you sought me? did you not know, that I must be about my father's business? ... And he went down with them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject to them. And his mother kept all these words in her heart. And Jesus advanced in wisdom, and age, and grace with God and men.
The connection
Anna was barren and prayed in the house of the Lord for a son, vowing to give him back. When the child was weaned she carried him up to Silo with her offering and gave him to the Lord: "For this child did I pray ... Therefore I also have lent him to the Lord all the days of his life" (1 Kings 1:27-28). Then she sang, "he shall give empire to his king, and shall exalt the horn of his Christ" (1 Kings 2:10). The boy stayed in the house of God, ministering before the Lord, and "the child Samuel advanced, and grew on, and pleased both the Lord and men" (1 Kings 2:26). Luke tells the childhood of Jesus in the same shape. His mother and Joseph "carried him to Jerusalem, to present him to the Lord" with the offering of the poor (Luke 2:22-24), and an aged Anna waits in the Temple to speak of Him. At twelve He stays behind, and after three days they find Him "in the temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors", and He says, "did you not know, that I must be about my father's business?" (Luke 2:46, 49). Luke closes both scenes the way the book of Kings closes Samuel's: "the child grew" (Luke 2:40), and "Jesus advanced in wisdom, and age, and grace with God and men" (Luke 2:52). The likeness is also its contrast. Samuel was lent to the Lord by his mother, and left in the house of God. Jesus is presented as the firstborn who already belongs to the Lord, and in the Temple He does not wait to be called, as Samuel waited in the night: He calls it His Father's house. St Cyprian reads the barren Anna as the Church and her son as its sign: "and Samuel being born, was a type of Christ" (Testimonies I.20). The Catechism says the Presentation "shows him to be the firstborn Son who belongs to the Lord" (CCC 529), and that the Finding reveals "his total consecration to a mission that flows from his divine sonship" (CCC 534).
Moral sense
Anna prayed for a son, and when she was given him she gave him back. She did not stop loving him; she carried him to Silo herself and brought him a little coat every year. What we most love is safest lent to the Lord. Mary did the same at the Temple, and twelve years later she learnt what it cost: three days of searching, and an answer she did not understand. She did not argue with it. She "kept all these words in her heart", and Jesus went down with them and was subject to them. The lesson runs both ways. Parents give their children to God, and must bear it when God takes them at their word. And every soul is meant to be a child in the house of God, growing in favour with God and men, hearing and asking before it presumes to teach, and ready to say with Samuel, Speak, Lord, for Thy servant heareth.
Anagogical sense
Samuel was lent to the house of the Lord "all the days of his life", and the house was a tent at Silo that was later lost. The child in the Temple speaks of a house that is not lost, His Father's, and He is going there by way of the Cross: the three days of searching end when He is found, as the three days of the tomb end on Easter morning. What a mother lends to God at the door of the sanctuary is not lost but kept; and the end of the story is a Son who is found, not in a house made with hands, but in the house of His Father where He has gone to prepare a place, so that where He is, His own may be also.
The Fathers
St Cyprian, Three Books of Testimonies Against the Jews I.20: "Hannah, barren, from whom is born Samuel, not according to the order of generation, but according to the mercy and promise of God, when she had prayed in the temple; and Samuel being born, was a type of Christ." St Augustine, City of God XVII.4, on Hannah's song: "in which, indeed, the change of the ancient priesthood was then figured and is now fulfilled."
Warrant
Patristic because Luke does not name Samuel; St Cyprian calls him a type of Christ (Testimonies I.20), and St Augustine reads Anna's song as figuring the new priesthood in Christ (City of God XVII.4). The likeness of Luke 2:52 to 1 Kings 2:26 is plainest in the Hebrew and the Latin, which the Douay follows; the site's Septuagint (Swete) has a shorter verse there, kai to paidarion Samouel eporeueto, kai agathon kai meta Kyriou kai meta anthropon, so the verbal echo in Greek is chiefly in "with the Lord and with men" against Luke's para theo kai anthropois. In 1 Kings 1:25 the Greek has prosegagon enopion Kyriou, they brought him before the Lord, where Luke 2:22 has parastesai to kyrio. The reading of the three days of searching as the three days of the tomb is a common later devotional reading, not a claim made by the Fathers quoted here.
Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 529.
The verses
1 Kings 1:24 · 1 Kings 1:27 · 1 Kings 1:28 · 1 Kings 2:26 · 1 Kings 3:10 · 1 Kings 3:19 · Luke 2:22 · Luke 2:43 · Luke 2:46 · Luke 2:49 · Luke 2:51 · Luke 2:52
