Treasuring God’s Word In and Through the Process

 

Saturday 13 June

From the Gospel of Saturday, June 13, 2026, Memorial of the Immaculate Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Luke 2:41–51).

"And his mother treasured up all these things in her heart" (Lk 2:51b).

We ended our reflection yesterday praying that we may allow the Lord to penetrate and pierce our own hearts with His healing truth and love.

It is not the first time that our evangelist tells us of Mary conserving and treasuring things in her heart.

After the visit of the shepherds, we read that Mary "treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart" (Lk 2:19). There she was reflecting on all that the shepherds had said about the child.

In our Gospel today, after the losing and finding of the child Jesus in the Temple, Jesus responded in such a way that the evangelist tells us that Mary and Joseph "did not understand the saying which he spoke to them" (v. 50).

Yet immediately afterwards we read:

"His mother treasured up all these things in her heart."

A look at the verbs used in these two passages can help us deepen our reflection.

After the visit of the shepherds, Luke uses the verb syntereo. Here, after Jesus' response in the Temple, he uses diatereo. In both cases, we find different prepositions attached to the verb tereo.

This verb tereo can mean: to keep in view, take note of, watch over, guard, preserve, hold in reserve, maintain, protect, keep intact, observe, or obey.

After the shepherds' visit, Mary was keeping together, conserving, preserving, and gathering within her heart all that had been said about Jesus. The preposition added to tereo here is syn, which means with. Hence we can think of it as keeping or putting things together.

Here, after a response she did not fully understand, Mary continues to keep, preserve, ponder, and guard these words, allowing them to pass through her heart and remain there until God's time would reveal their full meaning. The preposition added to tereo here is dia, which means through. Hence we can think of it as keeping through, carrying through, almost like going through a process. Normally in the translations, attention is not paid to these prepositions.

This little focus on the preposition dia used in our passage helps us appreciate Simeon's prophecy to Mary:

"And a sword will pierce your own soul too" (Lk 2:35).

What sword pierces the heart more deeply than the Word of God?

As the Letter to the Hebrews says:

"Indeed, the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart" (Heb 4:12).

It is this Word of God that Mary continually pondered, conserved, guarded, and allowed to work within her. Whether the events were joyful and consoling, as at the visit of the shepherds, or mysterious and difficult to understand, as in today's Gospel, she preserved them in faith.

This continual openness to God's Word purified her heart and kept it wholly directed towards Him. She did not demand immediate explanations. She trusted. She waited. She allowed God's plan to unfold in its own time.

From Nazareth to the house of Elizabeth; from Bethlehem to Egypt and back again; from the hidden years at Nazareth to the pilgrimage to Jerusalem; from Cana to Calvary, where the lifeless body of her Son was placed in her arms, Mary remained faithful and continued to ponder and treasure God's Word and His works in her heart.

I strongly believe that it was this lifelong pondering of God's Word and works that enabled her to see clearly at Cana and to instruct the servants with confidence: "Do whatever he tells you" (Jn 2:5).

Even after the Resurrection and Ascension, we find her persevering in prayer with the apostles at the beginning of the Book of Acts.

Today, as we celebrate the Immaculate Heart of Mary, she invites us to turn our attention to the interior life. She reminds us that holiness begins not with outward appearances but with a heart that listens, receives, preserves, is pierced and divided by, and obeys God's Word.

In this sense, she teaches us what Saint Paul would later call the true circumcision: not something merely external, but an interior transformation wrought by God. As Paul writes:

"Real circumcision is a matter of the heart, spiritual and not literal" (Rom 2:29).

The Immaculate Heart of Mary is therefore not simply a heart spared trials, anxieties, mysteries, and sufferings. Completely far from it! In our Gospel she says to the child Jesus:

"Son, why have you treated us so? Behold, your father and I have been looking for you anxiously" (Lk 2:48).

Her heart is a heart entirely open to God, a heart that welcomes His Word, allows itself to be pierced and purified by it, and remains faithful even when that Word is not yet fully understood.

Mary's greatness lies not merely in receiving God's Word, but in preserving it, pondering it, and trusting it through every joy, uncertainty, and sorrow. Her heart remained pure because it remained surrendered. She continued to believe even when she could not yet see.

May our Mother, who knew anxieties, uncertainties, limitations, and sorrows like us, obtain for us the grace to treasure God's Word in our hearts and to remain faithful when His ways seem hidden. May we allow His living Word to carry out its saving work within us—piercing, revealing, purifying, healing, and transforming us—until our hearts become ever more like Mary's and ever more conformed to the Heart of her Son.

For, as Saint Paul reminds us,

"Faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the word of Christ" (Rom 10:17).

May we grow in faith!

Ifeanyichukwu Joseph Ezemba