Today’s readings can be found here.
Reflection
What’s in a mother’s heart? Who could really answer such a question? A mother’s heart is an endless ocean of things that cannot be encapsulated in any formula. Yet today’s feast of Mary’s Immaculate Heart gives us a peek into it. We are helped by a passage from Luke’s Gospel that recounts a dramatic event with a happy ending, involving 12-year-old Jesus along with Mary and Joseph.
Jesus at the height of a feast lingers in Jerusalem without telling anyone, and it’s only after a day’s journey that Mary and Joseph notice his absence. They search for three days without finding him but eventually discover him in the temple talking to the elders and teachers.
“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.”
Love does not always comprehend everything that happens, but true love, a mother’s love, stubbornly seeks us until it finds us, and when it does not understand, it knows how to take everything in, how to reflect on events and misunderstandings by always giving love precedence over everything else: “His mother kept all these things in her heart.”
It’s not wrong to think that we are among the things Mary guards in her heart, because she is our Mother by the will of Jesus Himself. It’s good to know that we’re safe in someone’s Heart and that this Heart is really an immaculate refuge, without any evil: indeed, which precisely keeps us safe from it. So many times, that Heart even defends us from ourselves. That Heart is the surest way back home, back to Jesus.
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Father Luigi Maria Epicoco is a priest of the Aquila Diocese and teaches Philosophy at the Pontifical Lateran University and at the ISSR ‘Fides et ratio’, Aquila. He dedicates himself to preaching, especially for the formation of laity and religious, giving conferences, retreats and days of recollection. He has authored numerous books and articles. Since 2021, he has served as the Ecclesiastical Assistant in the Vatican Dicastery for Communication and columnist for the Vatican’s daily newspaper L’Osservatore Romano.
