Readings
of the day: Lamentations 2:2, 10-14, 18-19; Psalm 74:1b-2, 3-5, 6-7, 20-21; Luke 2:41-51
On this feast of the Immaculate Heart of
the Blessed Virgin Mary, why are our readings from Scripture so gloomy?
We hear first today from the Book of
Lamentations, in which Israel has been reduced to hunger; to exile; to fighting
for survival as a nation. Lamentations and again the Psalmist invite the people
of Israel to appeal to the Lord for their survival; “for the lives of [their] little
ones” especially. We echo the Psalmist with our response: “Lord, forget not the
souls of your poor ones.” (As we make this prayer, let us not forget the poor
among us, here in our city and in our communities.)
The Gospel is not much brighter than our
first reading, from Lamentations, or our Responsorial Psalm. Jesus becomes lost
in Jerusalem during his family’s yearly Passover visit there. How many of us
have ever lost sight of our child, even momentarily, in a busy public place?
This can be a frightening experience! Imagine losing your child for three full
days, as Joseph and Mary lost Jesus in Jerusalem for three days before he was
found “listening to” the Jewish teachers in the Temple “and asking them
questions.”
Last summer, I visited Jerusalem as part
of a Basilian Peace and Justice Pilgrimage. One of my biggest fears was to
become separated from our group and lost in Jerusalem, a city I do not know
well, with large crowds and narrow, often uneven streets…
Jesus becomes lost for three days in the
noisy chaos of Jerusalem. The Gospel writer Luke intends this event to be a
foreshadowing of the passion and death of Christ. We are invited to read and
hear the rest of the Gospel in light of the cross, death, and resurrection of
Christ.
After his death on the cross, Jesus
Christ becomes lost to us; lost for three days in the silent chaos of hell. God
loves us so much that even hell cannot and will not remain forever without
God’s presence. As we profess in our Creed on Sundays and important Holy Days,
Jesus “descended into hell” to bring God’s salvation even there. And so the
sorrow of the death of Christ, foreshadowed by the loss of Christ in Jerusalem,
is not the end. Sorrow will end in joy; in Jesus and in us being found; in our
being saved. Do not our gloomy readings today point to this joy; to our
salvation?
And so what makes Mary’s heart
especially “immaculate” that we celebrate her Immaculate Heart the day after
her Son’s Sacred Heart? Mary is immaculate of heart, I think, because of what
her heart treasured: Both the sorrows and joys of bringing into the world; of
raising as a child; of watching suffer, die, and rise the Savior of the world,
Jesus Christ. In her immaculate heart, Luke says, Mary “kept all these things.”
May we, after the example of Mary,
treasure God’s presence in our hearts both in times of sorrow and of joy;
trusting in God in times of sorrow and giving thanks to God in times of joy.
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