20 June 2020 - in her heart

Today's Readings from the Feast

(Audio)

After they had completed its days, as they were returning,
the boy Jesus remained behind in Jerusalem,
but his parents did not know it.

It was not out of disobedience to his parents that he left them. It was out of obedience to the Father. He honored his mother and his surrogate father. But he always gave precedence to his duty to his Father in heaven. This was done not only for the sake of his Father, but also for his earthly parents, that they would learn to accept this priority in his heart now, and not when he would later go forth to suffer. He was giving them a grace of preparation.

After three days they found him in the temple

We can learn from this how to respond when Jesus seems absent to us. We discover that if we diligently seek him, not according to the ways of flesh and blood (because they "looked for him among their relatives and acquaintances" without finding him), but according to the Spirit, found where God is worshipped. The absence of Jesus for us is always some share in the Paschal mystery, the days of his death and burial. Yet when we discover Jesus in the temple we learn to overcome the despair that comes when we believe that something outside of the divine plan has occurred.

“Why were you looking for me?
Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?”

We ask, 'Where are you when we need you Jesus? Why do you seem to sleep in the earth, to have descended to the dead?' But as long as we seek him we learn that we consistently discover him in his Father's house. It happens reliably, and therefore gives us courage. The wisdom of his plan, which seemed like he an abandonment or a surrender of his obligations for the things of the world was actually that by which he would be revealed in a deeper way, making his divine nature more manifest. Even in the finding in the temple we see hints of the revelation of the resurrection. We gain, even from the veiled manifestation, the ability to rely on that truth and trust it even when he seems absent to us in the future. Or we can, in any case, if we respond to the situation as did his mother.

and his mother kept all these things in her heart.

Jesus astounded the teachers of the temple with his wisdom. It was clear that he was about no merely human purpose in his choosing to remain behind in the midst of the teachers. The temptation that his parents faced was to let their annoyance at the inconvenience to themselves and the difficulty they endured to conceal from them this manifestation of who Jesus was, this deeper knowledge he wanted to reveal. It is a temptation that we all face. So we must learn to have hearts like the Immaculate Heart, which can see beyond any suffering of its own to the glory of the heart of Jesus.

Mary the mother of true wisdom, becomes the scholar or disciple of the Child. For she yielded to Him not as to a boy, nor as to a man, but as unto God. Further, she pondered upon both His divine words and works, so that nothing that was said or done by Him was lost upon her, but as the Word itself was before in her womb, so now she conceived the ways and words of the same, and in a manner nursed them in her heart. -Bede

The Lord GOD made justice and praise spring up before all the nations. This happened when Jesus astounded the teachers in the temple, when he revealed the unique relationship between himself and the Father to his earthly parents. And he did so by the revelation of his resurrection. But if we are to follow him through his apparent absence to this manifestations we need hearts like that Immaculate Heart. And since our own hearts are much weaker (one is tempted to say much more maculate) it is a great grace that we can rely on Mary's heart where our own fail. She will reveal the fruits of her contemplation to us even and especially when we ourselves feel lost and can't find Christ. We learn from her to join a song which the earth could not teach, a song that is truly new, "My heart exults in the Lord, my Savior."