Sermon Tone Analysis
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Title
Immaculate Heartbreak
Outline
Many people see God, Jesus, and Mary as impassive as a statue
Like a gray statue of Mary in a garden or church, often with a blank look on her face
Like a corpus of Jesus on a crucifix, unresponsive, dead
Like God at those times when the heavens are brass and your prayers seem to bounce off
But while those may be how we feel or the best way to make an image, we are reminded that neither God nor Mary are like such popular images.
In the gospel we see a caring Mary and a characteristic Mary
She and Joseph notice that Jesus is missing
He was old enough to be on his own with friends and relatives
But at mealtime he is missing - it turns out he was never with the company in the first place
They rush back to Jerusalem and search
They did not say, He is God’s youth - God, take care of him
No, perhaps starting in the evening, perhaps only early the next morning they push on uphill to Jerusalem and then retrace where they had been in the city and where they think he may have gone
The immaculate heart of Mary is always searching for Jesus; she will not let him get far away again
They find him where they do not expect, in the Temple, for he was no rabbi nor even in rabbinic school.
Mary expresses the fact that they do not understand why he had stayed and why he was there.
The immaculate heart of Mary is finite.
She probably did not understand why as she stood by the cross either.
But the truth here is to follow Mary and she will lead you to Jesus
Jesus explains, although they will not get it for some time: “I must be in my Father’s house.”
He was spending time with his Father, time in his Father’s house, and had drawn them into his Father’s house.
And that is where we will eventually leave Mary, in a house where the body of Christ meets, a local part of the new Temple.
She will not stray far from where he is.
They went back home and life went on, but life, I am sure, was never the same, even if Jesus was working with Joseph every day.
Turn back to Lamentations and see Mary as the daughter of Zion
Now we see her in her heavenly role, looking over her children, very much as in Revelation 12.
They children are not in good shape, but she is not scolding, she is mourning.
She cradles some in her arms even when they are dying.
She sorrows over those who misled her people.
And her cry goes up to God as she and the prophet are one, and their mourning is also the mourning of God.
Surely there are some that she saves, some that she nurtures, some over which she can only lament, as she surely did at the cross.
Here we see Mary as the universal Mother of the Church - it is her children who suffer, who are scattered, who flee and fall.
This is not the impassive statue or the Stoic mother, but the immaculate heart.
Sisters, this is the heart of Mary we celebrate today.
We can stand before the statue, but our thoughts and prayers go to her heart.
It is immaculate, so she will always lead us to Jesus.
“Come, she says, we will find him.
Oh, there he is, in his Father’s house.
The Father is waiting for you too.”
It is indeed a heart, a caring place.
She is one with the Father and the Son so she cares like God does.
She sees the lost one, she sees the one fleeing, she sees the wounded one.
She sheds heaven’s tears and heaves her sighs up to her Son and his Father.
They are the Spirit’s groaning, too deep for words.
And the Father hears, for she is, as we will be, one with them.
We celebrate the immaculate heart of Mary, as it was on earth and as it is in heaven.
Readings
FIRST READING
Lamentations 2:2, 10–14, 18–19
2 The Lord has devoured without pity
all of Jacob’s dwellings;
In his fury he has razed
daughter Judah’s defenses,
Has brought to the ground in dishonor
a kingdom and its princes.
10 The elders of daughter Zion
sit silently on the ground;
They cast dust on their heads
and dress in sackcloth;
The young women of Jerusalem
bow their heads to the ground.
11 My eyes are spent with tears,
my stomach churns;
My bile is poured out on the ground
at the brokenness of the daughter of my people,
As children and infants collapse
in the streets of the town.
12 They cry out to their mothers,
“Where is bread and wine?”
As they faint away like the wounded
in the streets of the city,
As their life is poured out
in their mothers’ arms.
13 To what can I compare you—to what can I liken you—
O daughter Jerusalem?
What example can I give in order to comfort you,
virgin daughter Zion?
For your breach is vast as the sea;
who could heal you?
14 Your prophets provided you visions
of whitewashed illusion;
They did not lay bare your guilt,
in order to restore your fortunes;
They saw for you only oracles
of empty deceit.
18 Cry out to the Lord from your heart,
wall of daughter Zion!
Let your tears flow like a torrent
day and night;
Give yourself no rest,
no relief for your eyes.
19 Rise up! Wail in the night,
at the start of every watch;
Pour out your heart like water
before the Lord;
Lift up your hands to him
for the lives of your children,
Who collapse from hunger
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