(Saturday of the 12th
Week in Ordinary Time)
Memorial of the
Immaculate Heart of Mary
June 28, 2014 8:30am
This morning I want to point out two
details in this familiar passage from the Gospel of Saint Luke.
First, when Mary and Joseph find
Jesus in the temple, Mary says, “Your
father and I have been looking for you.”
And Jesus responds, “Did you not know that I must be in my
Father’s house?”
Jesus very gently but very
definitely takes the name father from
Joseph and gives it to God.
So apparently, here, at what was
probably his first Passover in the temple, Jesus begins to get a breakthrough.
He begins to get some awareness
or consciousness that he has a special and even unique relationship with God as
his Father.
He begins to get some realization
that he is in a unique way the Son of God.
It is a dramatic moment.
The second point that I want to
note relates to Mary.
The passage says that “Mary kept all these things in her heart.”
Mary’s wisdom was a combination
of head and heart.
She has the right sense of Jesus’
duty toward them as parents.
But Mary also operates from her
heart.
She listens to her inner self, her
intuitive sense, to that point within her where the divine and human spirit
meet.
It is here in her heart that she
begins to understand more the words spoken to her by the angel telling her that
she was to bear a son and that he will be Son of the Most High.
Mary operates out of head and
heart both and it is this that gives her wisdom.
It is this that opens her to the
full reality of God and of Jesus and of her own role in God’s plan.
This is why we celebrate in our
Catholic tradition the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
