Saturday June 25, Immaculate Heart of Mary (Luke 2, 41-51)
On the face of a mother meet gentleness and strength, understanding and demand, tears of compassion and the surge of hope. Sion is a maternal figure in the book of Lamentations: the city, within it, has given birth to a people of believers who deposit in it all their concerns, all their questions. It is from this mother that we ask for the wheat for daily bread, it is on her bosom that the wounded faint. It is she who, in the night, does not cease to beg, filled with hope. She seems to be both “mother” and “daughter”, no doubt mother of the people and daughter of God… She prefigures feature by feature, in any case, the one who will be the mother of the disciples of Christ, at all times and in all venue. Mary, in the Gospel, is a mother in search: she is standing, reaching out towards this son who is her son, but who belongs to the Father and belongs to everyone. She is crossed by anxiety, perhaps by incomprehension… but she does not let herself be defeated. She does not let her questions affect the trusting relationship with her son and with God: mother of Christ and daughter of God, she “kept all these events in her heart”. We can imagine that she gathers all the strength of her faith to deposit in the heart of God, by an interior movement, all that could trouble her. Let us contemplate the “immaculate heart of Mary” which precedes us on the path of faith. With her, let us rise in the night and pray with confidence for the world.
Sister Véronique Thiébaut, nun of the Assumption
Other texts: Lm 2, 2.10-14.18-19; ps 73.
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Monday of the 13e Ordinary time week (Mt 8, 18-22)
Scribes seek to be disciples of Jesus. The welcome he gives to their request is short and direct: “follow me…” He does not speak to them of comfort, of situation: “the Son of man has no place to lay his head “. Jesus is a nomad of humanity. He goes where he hears the people crying out their suffering. Nor is it a question of keeping the line of believers from father to son. Jesus’ request is purified. Following Jesus requires abandoning “one’s self” in order to be completely available for a “you” who is called God. Many think this request impossible. They are too afraid of losing their identity, their lineage, their life. Yet paradoxically, the more we know God, the more He allows us to know ourselves. The more we leave what we have for Him, the more we receive all Creation in sharing. It seems to me that the encounter with Jesus puts me in truth with my humanity. We have all been touched by a wound that locks us in and prevents us from going to the end of love. If, for example, a trauma has introduced into me the belief that the other is dangerous, the following of Christ can only be done by letting his word of truth penetrate my whole being: in the face of the other can I let Jesus say to me: “Do not be afraid, it is I”? To follow Jesus is to consent to the evangelization of our depths. He will thus make me one of his disciples according to his own heart.
An Oblate from the Assumption
Other texts: Am 2, 6-10.13-16; ps 49.
