THE IMMACULATE HEART OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY (MEMORIAL)

Your father and I have been looking for you with great anxiety. 

We all can connect with the feelings of fear and worry that Jesus’ parents must have felt when they lost track of him in Jerusalem. Their only son had gone missing, and they spent three whole days looking for him. Even Mary, immaculate though her heart was, experienced “great anxiety” during their ordeal (Luke 2:48).

Don’t you find that encouraging? If Mary, who never committed a sin, was anxious, then anxiety is not a sin. That means it’s okay to feel worried and nervous about a situation that is out of your control. It’s okay, in trying circumstances, if you’re not as calm and collected as you are when everything is going well.

At the same time, we know how anxiety, if left unchecked, can lead to sin. It can give way to angry outbursts; it can make us fold in on ourselves and begin mistrusting people; it can make us think that God doesn’t care about us, so why should we care about him?

Surely Mary was tempted in these ways, but she never gave in. She didn’t belittle or upbraid Jesus when she found him. She didn’t harbor bitterness against him. And she didn’t lose her temper when he offered what might have seemed at first like a disrespectful response. Mary did the one thing God wants each of us to try to do when anxiety looms: she “kept all these things in her heart” (Luke 2:51).

In her heart. In her immaculate heart that was free from pride and selfishness. In her pure heart that was filled with faith and God’s perfect grace. In her open heart that held onto all the things that God had done for her.

As she is in so many other ways, Mary is our model for how to respond when anxiety threatens to overwhelm us. We may not have pure, immaculate hearts like hers, but we can still try to refocus our attention on the Lord and his love. We can still bring our anxieties to our heavenly Father and ask him to help us make sense of them. And there, in the sanctuary of our hearts, we can find Jesus again.

“Immaculate Mary, help me keep my heart as peaceful as yours was.”

Lamentations 2:2, 10-14, 18-19
Psalm 74:1-7, 20-21
Luke 2:41-51