08.06.2024 – St. Patrick Catholic Church, Largo, FL

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Mary kept everything in her heart

Isaiah 61:9-11, 1Samuel 2: 1,4-8, Luke 2:41-51

We celebrate today the memorial of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. The Immaculate Heart of Mary signifies, first of all, the great purity and love of the heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary for God. This purity is manifested in her “Yes” to the Father at the Incarnation, Her love for, and cooperation with, the Incarnate Son in His redemptive mission, and her docility to the Holy Spirit, enabling her to remain free of the stain of personal sin throughout her life.

This celebration holds a profound significance in the Christian faith, and is closely intertwined with the solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. This connection is not coincidental. Mary, in her deep love for her Son Jesus, extends this love to all those, for whom her Son lived, died, and was resurrected.

With this celebration, the Church invites us to remember and contemplate the Heart of Mary after having contemplated the meaning of the Heart of Jesus. We Christians have a lot to learn from Mary’s Heart. Mary is our teacher of the Christian life, who teaches us to give a complete and unconditional “YES” to the will of God. Like any of us, Mary also had to walk through that process of faith in which not everything was clear at the beginning.

The painful and anxious three days of searching would later repeat in the three days Mary lived through from Good Friday to Easter Sunday. Not everything was clear to her. However, Mary “kept everything in her heart,” with faith and trust. Mary’s heart teaches us not to lose hope and to meditate God’s Word in our hearts to discern the will of God. Mary’s Immaculate Heart, therefore, points us to her profound interior life, where she experienced both joys and sorrows, yet remained faithful, as we, too, are called to do.

The traditional image of the heart of Jesus is of a pierced heart, a heart that has suffered because of love. The heart of Mary is also a pierced heart. When Jesus was presented in the Temple, Simeon said to Mary, “a sword will pierce your own soul too.” Mary, like her Son, knew the pain that love brings, as is clear from today’s gospel. When the child Jesus went missing, Mary and Joseph went looking for him. The gospel reading captures the pain of loss, which is every parent’s pain, and the pain of everyone who has ever loved someone deeply. Jesus’ words to Mary when she eventually found him, “Did you not know that I must be about my Father’s business?” showed that even at a young age Jesus was given over to a greater purpose than Mary and Joseph’s purpose for him. Mary had to learn to let Jesus go even as a child. More painfully she had to learn to let him go as an adult as he hung from the cross. Yet Mary could do that because her own heart was given over to God; that is what we mean by referring to her Immaculate Heart. If our own heart is given over to God and God’s purpose for our lives, we too will come to know when and how to let go of those we love.

Today´s Psalmist echoes the prayer of Mary in the Magnificat: “My heart exults in the Lord, I find my strength in my God.”

O Heart of Mary, furnace and instrument of love, enkindle us with the love of God and our neighbour; help us to understand what true love means; help us to live by loving everyday