June 25, 2022 – Memorial of the Immaculate Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Click here for the readings (https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/062522.cfm)

With all the complexities, strangeness and difficulties to understand the situation, Mary kept the Lord closer to her heart. She kept all those revelations from the Lord closer to her heart that she may be able to understand them in the way God desires them to be understood.

This was how Mary would always find wisdom and strength because with the many events that happened in her life, she might not be able to bear them all. Mary was certainly confused, afraid and unable to decide and do anything if she chose to distance herself from the Lord by reacting out of impulse or mere emotions.

“Keeping all those things in her heart” would mean that Mary tried to understand how God was uncovering and revealing to her the plan of salvation. Mary realized that God reveals Himself to her every day. Mary did not want to miss all of them. Thus, she sought the best way of understanding them by not reacting to every event through mere emotion or just out of compulsion.

Mary did not react out of anger or through an emotional reaction in front of the young Jesus after losing him for three days. Though the words of the young Jesus were baffling for her, but she must have felt that there was something deeper in there. God must be behind it. In her confusion, she kept all those things in her heart, to ponder them, to seek wisdom and understanding in the way God wants her to understand them.

Most of all, Mary was able to do that because within her heart, God is there already. She has welcomed the Lord and allowed the Lord to be always in her heart. This led her into that kind of understanding from God’s perspective and so she responded to every invitation of God for her, willingly and lovingly, because God has touched her heart.

This is how we find Mary’s presence captivating in our Christian faith because her very life is an example of a perfect communion with God. This how we also find comfort in her, as a mother, because her human heart is touched by God’s heart. The human heart of Mary too, has given flesh to the human heart of Jesus.

In today’s feast, God invites us to grow in this area, that like Mary, our heart too will be touched by God’s heart and to allow the Lord to be in our heart. This is an invitation to make God as the closest and dearest in our heart. It is in this way that we shall also find understating, wisdom and strength in the many unfolding of events that happen to us every day.

As we allow God to be closer to our heart and to seek the Divine wisdom, we may also become more welcoming of others, more connected with people around us, by having a heart capable of loving, as Mary is to us. Kabay pa.