Reading and meditation on the Word of God, Saturday of the 10th week in ordinary time
Memorial of the Sacred Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary
June 12, 2021
Reading is delivered by Jason Christopher Stedy from the Church of Santo Yohanes Bosco, in Jakarta, Indonesia and meditation delivered by Margareth Sembiring from Saint Francis of Assisi Church in Singapore.
The reading is taken from the Holy Gospel according to Luke (2: 41-51)
Each year Jesus’ parents went to Jerusalem for the feast of Passover,
and when he was twelve years old,
they went up according to festival custom.
After they had completed its days, as they were returning,
the boy Jesus remained behind in Jerusalem,
but his parents did not know it.
Thinking that he was in the caravan,
they journeyed for a day
and looked for him among their relatives and acquaintances,
but not finding him,
they returned to Jerusalem to look for him.
After three days they found him in the temple,
sitting in the midst of the teachers,
listening to them and asking them questions,
and all who heard him were astounded
at his understanding and his answers.
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.
The Gospel of the Lord.
The theme for our meditation today is: The Unity of Hearts. There are two human hearts that were created to bealways united from the beginning to the end of life. God had designed it to be something natural. Neither of them had planned that. Because God had made it so, it happens as it should be. By nature the two hearts are intimate, united, inseparable and even death cannot separate them.
These two hearts are not a husband and his wife. It’s not even a very intimate couple and neither a twin. A brother and his sister have never been the same from the beginning. A father and his son do not have such kind of unity. Actually we are referring these two hearts to a mother and her child. Their intimate relationship has been made by the Creator since the moment of fertilization of the sperm and egg from the husband and his wife. We don’t have this particular quality in our respective fathers. It’s only a mother who has specification of her heart’s connected with her child.
The Lord God actually wants to establish the unity of the hearts of His Son Jesus Christ and the Blessed Virgin Mary in order to reveal the reality of the Kingdom of God. This Kingdom actually stands as a home for all the faithful who come together in the unity of their hearts as the beloved citizens of that Kingdom. We believers don’t only use our minds and reason to understand the mystery of our faith. Our faith manifests itself in our acts of love, therefore, wereally need the work from of our own hearts. We commonly say that love is the work of our hearts. The unity of hearts of Jesus and Mary has given birth to the life of the Church, that we can experience it through various services made by the Church. This unity of hearts indeed bears fruits through the acts of love and service.
The evangelist Matthew gives us an example of how a pure heart must be able to free itself from every form of perjury or false oath. The Lord God who is forever righteous requires us to be righteous as well. Sincerity and truth are what we need to offer to others and to the world. Christians must give nothing but the love and truth from the almighty God.
We can honestly testify to each other about our life together so blessed and beautiful, it’s because we actually enjoy a communion of our hearts with the will of the Lord’s heart! If the will of our hearts are not in unity with the will of God, we will definitely experience much and great problems in this life. In line with this, the unity of hearts among us human beings, such as between husband and wife or brother and sister, should become a real experience as we also experience with the Lord. Such unity is indispensable for any kind of relationship that we build together on this world.
Let’s pray. In the name of the Father… O loving Father in heaven, may Your Spirit always be with us until we complete our duties on this world in the path of our Lord Jesus Christ. Glory to the Father… In the name of the Father…