From the Gospel acclamation: “Blessed is the Virgin Mary who kept the word of God and pondered it in her heart.”
A reading from the holy Gospel according to Luke (Lk 2:41-51)
When his parents saw him, they were astonished, and his mother said to him, “Son, why have you done this to us? Your father and I have been looking for you with great anxiety.” And he said to them, “Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” But they did not understand what he said to them. He went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them; and his mother kept all these things in her heart.
Mary ponders in her heart the finding of Jesus in the temple and the circumstances surrounding it. In the same way, Mary ponders earlier in Luke’s account of the Gospel. He tells us in the chapter before this one of the announcement of the angel Gabriel that Mary had “found favor with God” and that she would conceive and bear a son named Jesus, Son of the Most high. With faith in the Lord, Mary replies to Gabriel: “May it be done to me according to your word.” Here, as Mary and Joseph find Jesus in the temple, in their astonishment they find Jesus amidst teachers, listening to them and asking questions. Mary asks, trying to understand him, “Son, why have you done this to us?” By the time she visits her cousin Elizabeth, Mary proclaims in her Magnificat “The Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name.”
Father in heaven, help me see what Mary sees as she keeps in her heart all that you have done for her. In anxiety, she said to Jesus, “Son, why have you done this to us?” Let Mary’s prayer be my prayer when I seek to do your will even when I don’t understand what my part is or where it will lead. Grant me the quiet, contemplative faith to keep your word as Mary did, trusting in a savior whose greatness is in lifting up the lowly and whose “mercy is from age to age.” Help me, Lord, find your Son in the midst of the day so that with Mary as a model of holiness, I find through faith and trust in your mercy a grateful heart that rejoices in all that you have done for me.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.