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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.
What's this? Another day honoring a heart? What is it with us Catholics? Besides, why do we honor Mary at all much less her heart? What is this all about? Okay, Protestants, listen up.
There is nobody that can love you like a mother can. A mother's child is part of her and always will be. A mother hurts when their child hurts and is happy when the child is happy. But, when we look at Mary, the mother of Jesus, the Mother of God, there is an even deeper relationship between the mother and the Son.
Mary was the very first Christian because she believed what the angel Gabriel told her. She carried the Lord inside of her for nine months and her body provided the building blocks and nourishment that was needed to bring the Savior into the world. Also, the Son was a fusion of her body and the Holy Spirit, a truly miraculous Child.
As a mother, Mary could love her Son fully and deeply. She understood why He had come but could not have a clue as to what was to be His ultimate fate at the hands of men.
Mary would have seen to it that Jesus learned the basics about God that all children learned, for the Bible tells us that Jesus grew in wisdom and this wisdom would have come from the basic teachings that His mother gave to Him. Mary was there to propel Jesus into His public ministry. It must have seemed to her that He was reluctant. At Cana, the wine ran out and she gave out the best advice given to anyone when she said, "Do whatever He tells you to do."
Mary's heart would have been filled with joy as the ministry of Jesus would have started to gather steam. But deep inside she remembered the words that had been spoken to her by Simeon, the old man at the temple when he said, "And a sword shall pierce your heart..." And that sword cut her to the quick as she saw her Son mistreated, tortured, and finally killed on a criminal's deathbed, the cross of shame. Her heart would have been broken as the lifeless body of her Son would have been placed in her hands and she would have wailed as only a mother could wail at the bloody death of her beloved Son.
So, it was Mary's heart, a symbol for her soul and the place that love resides that was pierced by the sword of the Crucifixion and it was the same heart that was filled with a joy beyond our understanding when she beheld her Son alive again on that Easter Sunday.
It is right and proper that we remember this sinless, immaculate heart that was always turned towards Jesus and His mission. Without Mary and her Immaculate Heart, perhaps we would still be waiting for the Messiah to come.
PURGATORY - THE FACTS
We have a very loving God. He sent us His only Son who took upon Himself all of the sins of the world, past, present, and the sins yet to be committed. All of these sins were forgiven when Jesus died on the Cross. For this, we must be forever grateful. But, if Jesus died and all sins were forgiven why would a place like Purgatory be needed? Isn't this slapping the crucified Christ and telling Him that His saving death was not enough? Actually, no. Read further and hopefully, my poor attempt at an explanation will help you understand.
Once I was playing softball in a vacant lot across from my childhood home. In Chicago, we play Clincher softball. A Clincher is a large softball and it is played using underhand slow pitch. I was up at bat and the pitcher sent me a beautiful pitch, it was coming in low and slow, just where I liked them to be. I swung the bat but was a bit too early and I tipped the ball to the first base side and it hit the fence of the house behind our field and went through a window making a crash that I swear was heard around the world. Suddenly, I was the only person standing in the field. There was no point in running away, the neighbor knew who played in the field. He came out and surveyed the damage. I looked at him and was very scared. He saw I was alone and said to not worry, that this could be fixed. and that I was forgiven because accidents happen. He measured the window and said he would be back soon with the glass. Shortly he came back and he removed the broken pieces, laid in a fresh bead of putty and the window was as good as new. He then turned to me and gave me the receipt for the glass and asked if I would please ask my parents to give me the money for the glass. I looked at the receipt, it was for five whole dollars - a fortune for a kid who was making twenty-five cents a week for an allowance. I gulped and went to see my Dad. There was no sense in seeing Mom about this, she would just send me to Dad. He said he saw what happened, looked at the receipt and pulled out his wallet and gave me the five dollars. He did not holler, he said accidents happen and he would front the money and I could do extra chores to pay him back.
So in our little story, we have an offense, a broken piece of glass. We have repair of the issue and forgiveness, but we still had to deal with repaying my father for the money the glass cost. I was forgiven, but the effect on the family budget had to be cured, I had to restore what I had broken. These extra chores can be likened in a very imperfect way to purgatory. We all sin on earth and our sins are all forgiven but we have left on our soul the effects of our sins. The sin is gone, but the stain, caused by our attachment to sin, remains. It is this stain that those of us in Purgatory are getting rid of. Heaven is a place where no evil is allowed to exist because it is a place where we see God face to face.
When we die in the grace of God, we will still have all of these stains that have to be bleached out. For example, when you died, you hated George because he stole your pencil (or whatever) and you left earth with this on your soul. What would happen if you met George in heaven? Discord at the very least would follow. So you, yourself, will choose to go to purgatory because in your love for God you will know that this burden needs to be fully released.
Purgatory is a painful place. The pain comes from the fire of God's love and your longing to be with Him in heaven. Purgatory is also a joyful place because all of the people there know that at one point in the future this suffering will end and they will be with God in heaven. The souls in Purgatory pray unceasingly. The sad part is that they cannot pray themselves out of Purgatory. The time for making up for temporal punishment for sins is while we are on earth through our prayers and sacrifices. So the Poor Souls, some who have been there for centuries as we reckon time, need our help, our prayers, and our sacrifices to help them escape Purgatory and enter heaven earlier than they might if depending on themselves. Purgatory is a joyful place. If you were to offer a poor soul the chance to come back to earth, he or she would reject that choice because of the great happiness they feel at being assured that they cannot offend God anymore and that soon they will be with Him face to face. That joy is greater than any joy we can experience on earth.
How can we help them? Well, we can offer our own prayers and sacrifices and we can offer them our mass attendance and the grace from every time we take the Holy Eucharist. The Mass and the Eucharist are the most efficient ways. From the website "Our Catholic Prayers" A link to their website is below.
In purgatory, the souls of many of those who have died in God’s grace undergo purification so that they may enter heaven. The Prayer of St. Gertrude, below, is one of the most famous of the prayers for souls in purgatory. St. Gertrude the Great (pictured at left) was a Benedictine nun and mystic who lived in the 13th century. According to tradition, our Lord promised her that 1000 souls would be released from purgatory each time it is said devoutly.
Eternal Father, I offer Thee the Most Precious Blood of Thy Divine Son, Jesus, in union with the masses said throughout the world today, for all the holy souls in purgatory, for sinners everywhere, for sinners in the universal church, those in my own home and within my family. Amen
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