The Breakfast Club, John Hughes’ 1985 teen coming-of-age movie, is iconic. For those of you who have never seen it (I must admit that I have only seen it once), the film revolves around 5 high school students of varying backgrounds being stuck together in Saturday detention. Each represents a typical high school stereotype or click. Judd Nelson plays the punk/criminal. Ally Sheedy the outcast girl. Molly Ringwald the pretty and popular girl. Anthony Michael Hall the genius in school. And Emilio Estevez is the jock. At the outset of the film each adheres to their roles…their identities…very strictly. And prejudices towards each other based on those roles dominate their interactions. But over time, as they day progresses, they begin to gradually get to know each other and the struggles each goes through in maintaining the images they have had thrust on them or created. As the walls come down they begin to change. Relationships are forged between characters who, just a few hours earlier, hated each other. They form a group bond and depart to the strains of the Simple Minds song, “Don’t You Forget About Me”. They discover that each is a brain, a criminal, a princess, an athlete and an outcast. All just trying to find their way. That brief stint in Saturday detention has changed them…forever. Never to go back to the person they were.
I have mentioned here before how a Cursillo weekend changed the course of my life on a path where Christ holds a more central role than He had before. I recall asking a group of Confirmation students if they believed that Christ was God. I told them that they did not have to answer me right there but how they answered that question would determine the direction of their lives. And they would not be able to go back.
In today’s Gospel we see Jesus in the temple teaching the elders, when His parents find Him after three days of searching. He asks them, “did you not know that I must be in My Father’s house?” Jesus was a good Jew. He grew up studying the Law and the Prophets. He could quote scripture and teach the meanings of the many stories in the book we call the Old Testament. But He did not come to remain a good Jew. He came to fulfill all the prophesies of the coming of the Messiah and to reunite His people to His Father. While he respected what His ancestors did and He learned about, He came to move His people forward. To replace their hearts of stone (carved in the tablets of the Law) with hearts of flesh. Hearts with a love of God and neighbor. Jesus was on a path that he could not retrace. He could not walk back the procession to Calvary.
And Paul tells the Corinthians the same thing in the first reading. He tells them, in essence, that they were part of the Old World but once they recognized and accepted Christ’s sacrifice on the cross for us, they were now part of a New World. The old things have passed away and the new things have come. They could not go back. How could one turn their backs on someone who willingly gave up His life for them. That subjected Himself to torture and death so that they could be redeemed for their sins and live in eternity as a new creation.
And Mary. “…kept all these things in her heart.” As she did at the manger. Or when Simeon predicted that a sword would pierce her heart. Or at Cana. And at the foot of the cross. She could not go back to worshipping Torah when the true Word…her Son had should her so much more. The apostles, and so many after them, gave up their lives rather than go back. Once you know the Truth, everything else is just a morning in detention.
