Today brings this week’s second “Mary feast.” On Tuesday we heard Mary’s Magnificat, spoken to Elizabeth as Mary visits her to share the good news that she is pregnant. Mary tells it this way: “The Almighty has done great things for me, and holy is his Name.” Today’s passage from Luke vividly depicts Mary and Joseph searching everywhere to find Jesus…who had stayed behind in Jerusalem. We can imagine them frustrated, perhaps a bit annoyed, but notably relieved when they found Jesus back in the temple. “Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” Jesus explains. As they retraced their steps and then came home to Nazareth, the gospel explains that Mary “kept all these things in her heart.”
These early days of summer, how do I experience myself as being “in the Father’s house”? What realities of life and faith and relationship–both stressful and life-giving–do I keep in my heart? And what needs, concerns and possibilities do I entrust to Mary’s heart?
—The Jesuit Prayer Team