Mary Remembers

What John says in his Gospel about how remembering becomes understanding and the path “into all the truth” (Jn 16:13) comes very close to what Luke recounts about remembering on the part of Jesus’ mother. In three passages of the infancy narrative Luke depicts this process of “remembering” for us. The first passage occurs in the account of the Annunciation of Jesus’ conception by the Archangel Gabriel. There Luke tells us that Mary took fright at the angel’s greeting and entered into an interior “dialogue” about what the greeting might mean. The most important passages figure in the account of the adoration of the shepherds. The Evangelist comments, “Mary kept all these things, pondering them in her heart” (Lk 2:19). At the conclusion of the words of the twelve-year-old Jesus we read once again, “His mother kept all these things in her heart” (Lk 2:51). Mary’s memory is first of all a retention of the events in remembrance, but it is more than that: It is an interior conversation with all that has happened. Thanks to this conversation, she penetrates into the interior dimension, she sees the events in their inter-connectedness and she learns to understand them.