A HEART THAT COMMUNICATES WITH LOVE.

June 20 2020
Memorial of the Immaculate Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary

READINGS: 2 CHR 24:17-25; PS 89:4-5, 29-30, 31-32, 33-34; LK 2:41-51.

 

A Jews proverb says, “If your heart is bitter, sugar in the mouth won't help.” Another Japanese proverb adds, “The heart is the most essential human quality.”

The heart of Mary is a heart of communication. Mary’s heart is always in correlation and intimate communication with the heart of her Son. The Latin expression “Ad Jesum per Mariam” (to Jesus through Mary) takes all its meaning when we fixe to ourselves the image of Mary leading us not to herself, but Jesus. In that sense, the Immaculate Heart of Mary can be presented as a canal or a bridge toward the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

We celebrated yesterday with great solemnity the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. Through that solemnity, we were given to see the greatest expression of love, the deepest identity of God: “God is love” (1 Jn 4:8). The day after this solemnity, we are called today, in a little less degree of festivity, to contemplate the Immaculate Heart of Mary. The heart of the mother is the highway to the heart of the son. A good mother always communicates with her son in a heart to heart basis. For, where is the heart of the son, there will the heart of the mother be. We can here quote the proverb that says, “Who takes the son by the hand, takes the mother by the heart.” About Jesus and Mary, the love we have for Jesus opens us consequently to love his Mother. And the heart of Mary is the secret book where is written all about her Son. In her heart, the Gospel of Luke will always mention, she kept everything concerning her Son.

Today’s Gospel passage leads us to see the heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary as a suffering heart, a heart-searching anxiously and restlessly for the Son she has lost. The episode of Jesus in the Temple, in addition to describing the beautiful image of Joseph and Mary in search of the child Jesus they forgot in Jerusalem, comes as a challenge to parents on the relationship they should entertain with their children.

Parents, you are not only the genitors of your children, but you also are their guardians. Therefore, you should watch over them, care for what they do, know where they are, and how they are. It will sound strange, but the parents should monitor the steps and the life of their children. We live in a world and in societies where the education of children and young people is left at more than 75% at the account of social media, video games, TV channels, and the society in general. Many parents have desisted from their first obligation. Some people think that all is just about providing for the physical and material needs (food, clothes, money…) of their children. Aside from those needs, nothing else, not even care for the moral, spiritual, and psychic.

To say it in all honesty, how many are the parents who know the friends with whom their children move around? How many check the cellphone or online historic and laptops of their children. We speak of freedom. But how many children, under the cover of that freedom are getting lost in pornography, video gaming, social encounter… Many are the children, adolescences, and youth who spend their whole night on social media without their parents noticing it. And sadly, many children are getting corrupt or are building a fake identity, fake personalities, some playing the hackers, addicts to games, or even drug addicts and giving into many other vices. All these, simply because parents have resigned from their responsibilities.

The feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary comes as a call upon our responsibilities, parents, educators, formators. We should, like Mary and Joseph, as we heard in the Gospel, worry about our children getting lost and search for them.

Like Mary, parents and especially mothers should learn to keep everything that is said of their children in their hearts and to meditate on them. For, it is not all the words that we pronounce o our children that are worth t be said. Mothers, and also fathers, should try to control what they say in front of their children. The houses where children hear only bad words, there is no surprise that these children will use those words outside with their mates. We read that, after finding the child Jesus in the Temple, Mary “his mother kept all these things in her heart.” The Heart of Mary could be seen as the library or the safety where all about her son was kept. That is why her heart was made Immaculate, fount of all holiness, fount of love, a sinless heart. After Mary, let us also not nourish any bitterness or evil thoughts in our hearts, neither against our children when they misbehave, nor against anyone who wrongs us. Instead, from our hearts should spring what will come out of our mouths, words of love and blessings. For, as says the Irish proverb, “What is nearest the heart is nearest the mouth.”