Homily for Memorial of Immaculate Heart of Mary

Homily for the Memorial of the
Immaculate Heart of Mary

June 25, 2022
Luke 2: 41-51
Provincial House, New Rochelle

“His mother kept all these things in her heart” (Luke 2: 51).

Finding of the Savior in the Temple

(William H. Hunt)

What things did the mother of Jesus take to heart?  The focus of this familiar story, of course, is Jesus.  In short form, she takes Jesus to her heart, as she’s done since his conception (cf. Luke 2:19).

1st, Jesus recognizes his true Father and wants to be where his Father is and do what his Father wants.  “Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” (2:49), or in an alternate, equally valid translation, “Did you not know that I must be about my Father’s business?” (thus Rheims and JB).

Assuredly, Mary must have kept in her heart this knowledge of who her son was, to whom he really belonged.  Altho she didn’t know how God’s plan would develop, the plan told her in general terms by Gabriel, she was ready for whatever that might be.

2d, Jesus displays astounding understanding in his dialogs with the teachers in the temple—the scribes, the teachers of Torah.  It bespeaks the kind of upbringing the boy had already received at home in Nazareth—how important faith and Torah were in that household.  Years later, Jesus’ skeptical neighbors would ask, “Where did this man get all this?” (Mark 6:2).  Some of it was from his native intelligence and talents, as it is with any of us, and part of it was from the hearts of his mother and foster father.

The boy’s interactions with the teachers of the Law also bespeaks Jesus’ own focus in life:  to ask questions of the learned men and to offer his own observations.  He was “listening to them and asking them questions, and all who heard him were astounded at his understanding and his answers” (2:46-47).  We recognize Jesus as “the wisdom of God”—the title comes from St. Paul (1 Cor 1:24)—and his wisdom rests, of course, on his divine Personhood, but in human terms on his love for and mastery of Torah and all that the Lord had done for his people thru the ages, and his desire to focus his own life on all that.  Obviously, Mary and Joseph hadn’t witnessed the boy’s interactions with the teachers during those days.  We may reasonably suppose that some of those men informed the couple of what had been going on—and gave Mary a lot of food for thought, a lot of things to keep in her heart.

3d, we note that Mary and Joseph found Jesus “sitting in the midst of the teachers” (2:46).  God’s Son descended from his Father’s side and “pitched his tent among us,” in St. John’s evocative phrase (1:14)—note the endorsement of camping!  Thruout his public life Jesus would surround himself with people—the 12, the holy women who followed him and provided for them (Luke 8:1-3), and other disciples.  God’s Son wants to be in the midst of people, wants to be with us—not a distant Redeemer but one marked by accompaniment.  “When 2 or 3 gather together in my name, I’m there in their midst” (Matt 18:20).  He got his initiation into human closeness from his earthly parents and his “brothers and sisters,” his kin, at Nazareth (6:3).

Mary “kept all these things in her heart.”  The collect this morning calls her heart “a fit dwelling place for the Holy Spirit.”  It was fertile soil for her reflections on Jesus as she watched him mature, as she listened to his preaching, as she became the center of the disciples gathered in the upper room after his ascension.  St. Augustine says so aptly that Mary conceived God’s Word in her heart before she conceived him in her womb.  So she was ready for the Holy Spirit, ready for Jesus.

The collect prays that, with Mary interceding for us, “we may be worthy temples of [God’s] glory.”  Our worthiness comes from imitating her:  from keeping God’s Word in our hearts and, like her, letting our hearts lead us to act on the Word.