Mary kept all these words, pondering them in her heart.Mary kept all these words, pondering them in her heart.
The Kept Thoughts of Mary
Their Source – a Woman’s Heart
“But Mary kept all these words, pondering them in her heart.” The glimpse into Mary’s soul which these words afford is a precious one. It opens up to our gaze an attitude of mind which was not accidental, but deliberate; not of the moment, but constant. Later on in the same chapter Saint Luke repeats the phrase about Mary. He need not say it again; Mary’s habitual attitude of soul is now known to us, and it is not one to surprise us, although it deserves our study. Every mother takes a like attitude of soul towards her child. It is the result of a mother’s love. Her thoughts take one direction; her interests have one centre; her affection has one destination. The whole outward tendency of her soul is towards her child. How strong and full that tendency was in Mary’s case is clear, when we remember that Jesus was for her not only her Child but her God. In the stream of love which flowed from her heart to His were mingled the currents of every affection with which a woman can be influenced. Mary was the Daughter of the Father; she was the Mother of the Son; she was the Spouse of the Holy Ghost. Think of what that means. It means that her Child and her God exhausted the whole capacity of her love. Toward Him her daughter-heart, her spouse-heart, her mother-heart went forth in its fullest capacity. He touched every chord to which a woman’s affectionate nature can respond, and drew from it the sweetest melody that ever made music in a woman’s heart. God had planted within Mary the natural impulse which turns a child to its parent; and that which unites a spouse with her betrothed and also that which centres the love of parent upon its child. God had purified and ennobled and made rich in her these native instincts. The world’s history will tell us what human daughters and wives and mothers will do for human parents and spouses and children, Mary’s history reveals what the united force of all three must be when directed towards one object. The pure, white flames of every affection that can glow within a woman’s heart mingled their heat and light in Mary’s and were focussed upon Christ.
Their Value – a Mother’s Harvest
It was that triple love burning in Mary’s heart and directing its united flames on Jesus, her Son and her God, which made her keep all these words, and made her ponder over them. Jesus was kept and pondered on, because Mary loved every word uttered about Him. Every word uttered by Him came under her loving attention, found a place in the treasury of her thoughts and filled the hours of her life with reveries of prayer. Men of one book are a source of fear to their friends; we hesitate to speak in their presence of their pet book. They know too much about it; they know its lines and letters; they know even its commas; we dread to expose our own ignorance before the superior knowledge of a man of one book. Jesus was Mary’s Book. She studied Him and read Him and knew every line and letter of His life; she wrote that life in her heart; it was the best Life of Jesus ever written; it was the fullest gospel ever composed. The best of mother-loves wrote it, on the best leaves ever written upon. “She kept all these words in her heart.” We have a beautiful phrase in English that we often use, and I am afraid we do not notice its beauty. We say of committing something to memory, that “we get it by heart.” If ever that phrase was true in all the full beauty of its meaning, it was so in Mary’s case with regard to Jesus. It was Mary’s life-work to get Jesus by heart, and she did so, “She kept all these words in her heart.”
Their Fruits – a Sympathetic Understanding
What was the effect of Mary’s master-passion upon her? What was the effect on her soul of her kept thoughts? She got Jesus by heart, and what did it mean for her? It. meant a complete understanding of Him; a knowledge of His ways of thought and action; a sympathetic appreciation of what He wished and felt. Another Mary and her sister Martha sent a message to Jesus, and it ran thus: “He whom Thou loves is sick.” That was a beautiful prayer. As far as words went, it seemed to ask nothing. They did not say: “Come, or comfort, or cure.” In appearance, therefore, it was no prayer; in reality, however, they could have uttered no more touching prayer. A similar prayer had been uttered before the sisters of Bethany sent their message. Another heart had learned to know the Heart of Jesus long before they began their studies; another heart gave them the model for their request. “Now there was a marriage feast at Cana in Galilee; and Mary, the Mother of Jesus, was there; and the wine failing, she said to Him: ‘They have no wine!'” Mary’s prayer was the model. It ran thus: “This newly married couple are our hosts; they have no wine; I say no more.” In both cases there was some delay, for it is God’s way, sometimes, to keep us waiting; but in both cases there was the great miracle. Love read aright the Heart of Jesus.
Their Growth – a Song of Praise
The first effect, then, of Mary’s kept thoughts was an intimate knowledge of Jesus and an almost prophetic insight into His soul. Mary’s kept thoughts did something more. Kept thoughts are never barren; you can never think the same thought twice, without improving on it. You will see more in it. It will take on new color and new beauty; it will develop along new lines, or, at all events, it will stand out more clearly in the mind. A kept thought is a seed in a fertile soil. It sends out roots; it takes a firmer hold; it grows and branches; it expands into leaves and blooms into the beauty of flowers. A kept thought is not a dead thing; it grows; it is a living thing in a living soul. What was the harvest that came of Mary’s sowing? The first words she heard of Jesus she kept, as well as the last words. The first words were the revelation of His coming. She kept them, and as she went in haste over the hills of Judea to her cousin Elizabeth, the thoughts in her heart grew and expanded in the sunshine of the joy of her virginal motherhood. When she arrived at her cousin’s house they had grown to maturity, and blossomed forth into the Magnificat; that glorious song of praise, of gratitude, of knowledge of God’s ways with men, and of the fulfillment of His prophecies and promises to Israel.
Their Wealth – the Ennobling of Character
The miracle of Cana and the Magnificat are the evidences of the fruit of Mary’s kept thoughts. They are splendid evidences of most glorious fruits, yet they do not exhaust the benefit of Mary’s ruling habit. Greater than the knowledge of Jesus, greater than any sublime song, was the ennobling of Mary’s character as a result of her soul’s master-passion. The angel of the Incarnation disturbed her, and she needed to be calmed and encouraged; the angels of Bethlehem, whose message came to her through the shepherds, left her pondering, while the others wondered. Her great dignity had uplifted her without making her dizzy. She had still the simplicity of the Nazarean maid, but now it was a royal, a queenly, a divine simplicity. She had been brought into contact, physical, living contact, with her God; but more than that, and affecting her more profoundly, was the intimate, loving contact of her soul with God, because she kept Him in her heart, pondering over Him within her.
Their Glory – Motherhood of Soul
The surrender of Mary to God’s will, her glorious profession of humility, obedience and service, expressed in the words, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord!” was not simply an offering of herself to God to be His Mother in a physical aspect; it meant the offering of her soul, also, to be His sacred sanctuary, in the higher, grander relations of what we may call spiritual maternity. It was to her, we may believe, Christ alluded when He made answer to an enthusiastic admirer, after one of His sermons: “And it came to pass, as He spoke these things, a certain woman from the crowd lifting up her voice, said to Him: ‘Blessed is the womb that bore Thee and the paps that gave Thee suck.'” Then Christ made answer, admitting the truth of that statement, but asserting a nobler motherhood still and one in which Mary, His own Mother, was without a peer. “Yea, rather blessed are they who hear the word of God and keep it.” It was Mary who led the way in that blessedness, by keeping her Son in her heart after His birth had severed the physical bond that united them. “Mary kept all these words, pondering them in her heart.”
Their Scope – Full Dominion of the Soul
Christ in the sanctuary of Mary’s soul; Christ kept and pondered on; Christ, the Child of Mary’s soul, the Companion of her thoughts, the Treasure of her heart, filled and possessed Mary’s life, lifting it to a higher plane. Every thought, every desire, Mary’s hopes and fears, her likes and dislikes, her opinions of things, her judgments and her decisions; every act of mind and will, every movement of her soul was warmed and colored and beautified by Christ, who had become the day-spring of her life, the God that rose and increased to the splendor of the perfect day within her. “Mary kept all these words, pondering them in her heart.”
Their Power – the Master-Passion of the Soul
There is nothing to surprise us in all this, and we are not exaggerating the meaning of the words. Remembering what we have said about Mary’s absorption in her Son, whose love was the master-passion of her heart, we cannot state too strongly the effects of that passion. Take the weaker affection of other women; take one single current of the love that flooded Mary’s soul; take the faithful love of a daughter or the intense love of a spouse, or the passionate love of a mother singly, and we know what a change it will make in a woman’s life. The history of mankind bears witness to the strength of one master-passion. In such cases the whole stream of the soul goes one way; it wears out for itself a channel into which pour all the various currents, all the inclinations, emotions and feelings that stir the heart of mankind. Along that channel these mingled currents rush, gathering speed and force as they roll on and bearing all before them in an impetuous torrent. The dearest interests of man; the most precious objects of human affection; wealth, honor, family pride, home, health, life, and sometimes the very salvation of the soul, are swept like straws before the rush of that tide. Imagine, then, the strong outpouring of love from Mary’s heart towards her Son and her God; measure the depths and rush of that stream into which flowed fully every current of affection that can spring up in a woman’s heart. You will not be surprised, then, that Mary’s whole life should be borne along on that great sea and swept to the feet of her Son. “Mary kept all these words, pondering them in her heart.”
Mary kept all these words, because she loved her Son and her God, and then the knowledge she collected in this way reacted on her soul, giving her a complete sympathy with her Son, enriching her thoughts, as the Magnificat testifies, and uplifting and ennobling her character. Such was the cause and such the effect of Mary’s kept thoughts.
The Kept Thoughts of Men
The Spectrum of Mary’s Soul
Now it becomes our duty to inquire what thoughts we keep and to examine what their cause is and what their effect is on our souls.
The spectrum of the sun is the spreading out of its light by means of a prism or finely marked plate called a grating. When you see a rainbow, you see the sun’s spectrum, where the rays have been expanded into their various colors by means of the raindrops. If the spectrum of the sun be thrown on a screen instead of on the clouds, as in the case of the rainbow, then in the brilliant succession of colors from violet to red there may be seen dark lines. Those lines are shadows cast by the clouds of iron and silver and gold that float between us and the sun’s brightness. If the sun’s light came unimpeded, there would be no shadows on its spectrum; its tints would merge one into another from red to violet continuously. We should have then what is called a continuous spectrum. If the comparison is not too daring, we may say we have been studying the spectrum of Mary’s soul. Christ is the Light of the world, and the brilliancy of His light passed into her soul unimpeded, without the faintest obstacle, to cast its shadow on the beautiful colors into which the reflection of Christ is expanded in her soul.
The Spectrum of Man’s Soul
What are our kept thoughts? What is the spectrum expanded on our souls? We have not indeed, as Mary had, the living Christ to shed His light upon us; but we have Christ’s wish and Christ’s law pervading our everyday life and governing all its details. It is impossible that we should go through all those details here, because to do so would be to give a complete history of all our obligations. Let us select one or two duties. There is the duty of good reading, which must be exercised with greater care in our times, when the press reproduces life with the fidelity and completeness of an untouched photograph.
The Kept Thoughts of Reading
If publishers and editors exercise no care over what they put upon their paper, we are not for that reason excused from exercising care over what we put upon our souls. Where do our eyes turn first, where do they stay longest, when we take up a newspaper? Are we seeking for Christ there, treasuring up with love and devotion the slightest manifestation of His presence in the printed page? What articles do we skip over in our magazines? What articles do we gloat over? Is slothfulness, is sinful curiosity, is the base craving for scandal, the unhealthy greed of sensation, keeping the light of Christ out of our souls and leaving there the dark shadows of their own making? Should we like to have the spectrum of the thoughts gathered from our papers, our magazines and our books expanded before men for their inspection? Would there not be too many dark lines and too few bright spots? Would there not be too much world and flesh and Satan, and too little Christ? Are we reading with the eyes of Mary, with a loving lookout for Christ and with disdain and disgust for anything outside of Him? Have we Mary’s delicacy and nobility of soul? Do we shrink from what soils the mind, as instinctively as our hand shrinks from what soils the fingers? Are we as dainty with our souls as we are with our flesh? Do we pick our way through our reading, skirting the evil as guardedly and stepping over unsightliness as promptly as we avoid the mud and filth of our street-crossings? Mary kept the words of Christ, pondering them in her heart. What do we keep and ponder over in our hearts, from our papers and magazines and books?
The Kept Thoughts of Charity
Again, what are our kept thoughts about our neighbors? What are we glad to hear, what are we glad to know, about them? Is it the Christ in them we prefer to see and treasure in our memories, or is it the fallen human nature? What is the spectrum of our charity? Is it continuous or is it sadly and frequently interrupted? Is the pure white light of the Christ in others allowed to stream into our souls unchecked, unblemished, or is it seamed with dark shadows? The fumes of jealousy and of envy, the dense mists of resentment and of prejudice, the black clouds of spite and revenge, float between us and the light, and the spectrum of charity which should be a very vision of beauty and delight, and brilliant with many colors, is rather a band of darkness, with here and there a thin line of light. Would we know what thoughts we keep about our neighbor, then let us ask ourselves what are our conversations like. “Out of the fullness of the heart the mouth speaks. Our talk is a copy of our kept thoughts; our words give a photograph of our souls. Are we rehearsing faults, or scandals, or grievances, or offences, then we may be sure our kept thoughts are not like Mary’s; they are not of the Christ in our neighbor. “Amen, I say to you, as long as you did it to one of these, My least brethren, you did it unto Me.” What is our principle governing what we hear about our neighbor? Do we say: Here is something good about my neighbor; I will keep that? That is the Christ in my neighbor. Here is something evil I have heard, I will not keep that. That is not Christ in my neighbor. “Hast thou heard anything against thy neighbor?” asks the Scriptures. “Let it die within thee, trusting it will not burst thee.” Some are so fragile, so delicately put together, that when they hear anything against their neighbor they do not let it die and be buried within them, but they keep it and tell it as soon as possible, lest the possession of it disintegrate their unstable constitutions.
Having Thoughts and Keeping Thoughts
We saw the effect on Mary of her kept thoughts; what will be the effect on us of the thoughts we keep? You have heard the phrase: “Tell me the company you keep, and I’ll tell you what you are.” We might say in the same way: Tell me the thoughts you keep, and I’ll tell you what your soul is. It is not the thoughts you have, but the thoughts you keep that influence your life; the thoughts about which deliberate choice has been exercised, which you look at and look over and finally decide to retain, not the transient guests, but (the permanent boarders, the ones which we do not pass by, or ignore, or snub; but to whom we accept an introduction, and to whom we are always at home when they send in their cards. When they come, we keep them. Thousands of people may [pass our doors every day; of these, few call, fewer still remain; and but one or two make up our household. So is it in the world of the mind; thousands of thoughts may pass before it every hour; a few may knock, insistently, for admittance; fewer still cross the threshold and receive a welcome, and the home circle of our mind, the household group, is smaller yet. It is our household thoughts, the ever welcome and long-abiding guests of our souls, that profoundly influence our lives.
Kept Thoughts Making Our Characters
Out of choice comes character and out of character, conduct. The thoughts, therefore, that we fully and freely and deliberately choose go into the substance of our character and through it shape our conduct. It is clear, indeed, that nobility of soul is displayed in shrinking away from mean and low actions. Our friends, we feel, are too noble to stoop to any meanness; they are above that. In like manner a noble soul is above mean thoughts and never stoops to them. Remember, I am speaking of deliberately chosen thoughts, not of the fleeting, passing images that come and go; the bubble foam that flecks for a time the stream of consciousness. Such thoughts we cannot help having, but we can help choosing and keeping them. So then, every ignoble thought and feeling, and emotion that is despised, discloses a noble character; and ennobles it more. Every base image that beckons to the soul to come down from its divine heights and is rejected, forms the discarded debris of the soul’s fair architecture that rises to diviner heights. The rejected thoughts are an evidence of character and build it up. We are all partial to our friends, and that partiality blinds us to their failings and makes us keen-sighted for their virtues. We forgive much in them; we excuse them and defend them; our friendship dominates our talk about them and controls our acts. Now our kept thoughts are the friends of our soul; our household circle, as I have said. We have chosen them out of many, and have entertained them, and we are partial to them. Thinking over them increases our partiality; we open our eyes wider to their attractions and close them tight against their repulsiveness, and so they begin to lord it over our souls. Our kept thoughts become kings and if they are not good ones, they become tyrants. The will is enslaved. Its motives are swayed to the master-thoughts; its actions obey them. It chooses what the friend and abiding guest of its soul suggests; and as each choice contributes to form a habit and habit goes to form a character, it is clearly seen how the kept thoughts, the friends to whom our souls are so partial, must profoundly influence our lives.
Kept Thoughts Making Us Like Mary
Thus if our passion be to seek and find and choose the Christ in our everyday lives, we may hope to arrive at a faint resemblance of Mary’s soul. Our love, of course, is slight and cold, compared with the great fire kindled in her heart. Our search for Christ and our earnestness in hoarding up what we can learn of Him will not equal the keen-eyed eagerness and soul-avarice with which Mary sought out and treasured up every word spoken about her Son and God, and every new fact told of Him. As the cause is not as powerful, the effect will not be so striking; yet if we cannot hope to arrive at the fullness of Mary’s knowledge, we assuredly shall know more. Our thoughts will bear fruit, if not a hundred-fold, at least thirty-fold or perhaps sixty-fold. If our hearts do not overflow with the ecstatic gratitude and sublimity of the Magnificat, they will not, at all events, be wholly dumb. We cannot hope for the sympathetic insight that Mary had of Jesus. She was His Mother. Yet we shall not be entire strangers to Him. Above all if we learn to keep and ponder on the Christ in what we see and what we hear; if the deliberately chosen friends of our soul are from Him and leading to Him, if we read with pure eyes and if we listen with charitable ears, then we shall feel within our soul the ennobling influence of Christ; we shall be lifted high, indeed, although when we have attained our sublimest nobility, we shall behold the fair character of Mary, our Mother, towering to loftier and diviner heights. She loved more than we, and where we keep few things, she kept all the words about Jesus, pondering them in her heart. “And all they that heard wondered, at those things that were told them by the shepherds. But Mary kept all these words, pondering them in her heart.”
The Kept Thoughts of Christ
His Capacity for Thought by Creation
The kept thoughts of the Heart of Christ! What were they? “What are the drops of water in the sea?” we might rather ask. “All the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea doth not overflow,” says the Preacher, and the capacity of His Heart exceeds that of the ocean. His Heart was made to hold all mankind, its sins and its virtues, its loves and its hates. His Heart with an infinite tenderness and attractiveness drew all things to Itself, all wrongs that they might be made right again, and everything right that it might be rewarded. The infinite justice of God and the infinite malice of sin met in the Heart of Christ. Out of that struggle of justice with sin came our redemption and sanctification. Therefore it was that every soul of man was kept in the Heart of Christ, because every soul was the object of God’s justice and God’s mercy, and within the exceeding great love of Christ’s Heart justice and mercy met and effected the redemption of every man by overcoming sin. The kept thoughts of the Heart of Christ will be known from the purpose for which that Heart was created and the capacity which the Creator gave to it. “All the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea doth not overflow.” The ocean of Christ’s Heart is fed by countless streams, yet the infinite circle of Its shores and the infinite reach of Its depths never permit Its capacity to be overtaxed.
His Capacity for Thought by Experience
Great, however, as was the capacity which our Lord had in His Heart when He became man, yet it became greater still as the years of His life went by upon earth. Other springs of knowledge and love were opened up to pour their currents into His Heart. “And Jesus advanced in wisdom and age and grace with God and man.” Although, as God, our Lord knew all things, and although His human soul, elevated into union with Divinity, must have been adorned with every gift except that which would unfit His human nature for our redemption, yet He was to advance in wisdom by the fresh experience which flooded His soul with every new sight and sound throughout His life. The way in which experience contributes to knowledge may be illustrated by His dealings with Judas. He knew all about the treachery of this unhappy Apostle beforehand and foretold it, but the actual experience of it was something new and more harrowing, when a traitorous greeting fell on his ears and traitorous lips were pressed upon His cheek. In the same way many truths that our Lord already knew came home again to Him through the eye and ear and hand and tongue, tingling His senses with new experiences and thrilling His Heart with fresh love. “Jesus advanced in wisdom and age and grace with God and man.”
His Capacity for Thought by Sensitiveness
There was something else, too, which, besides His Heart’s original capacity and the experiences of every day, added to the store of the kept thoughts of Christ, and that was the extreme sensitiveness of His faculties. His senses and His human soul were of a finer texture than ours. His eyes saw deeper and His ear heard better. His touch was more delicate and more responsive. His mind was more recollected. In every respect He had as man faculties superior to ours, not in nature, it is true, but in quality, and He made far better use of them than we do. The records of the Gospel show that our Lord possessed an extremely delicate and sensitive organism. How often we read of His glance fathoming the thoughts of others! We see Him lose the taste and relish for food, when His zeal had won the soul of the Samaritan woman. We hear of Him distinguishing one touch from another when a great crowd jostled Him. Tears quickly filled His eyes and pity flooded His Heart on many occasions. Finally, the sweat of blood is the supreme evidence of how deeply and how fully He felt the experience of sorrow.
His Marvelous Store of Thoughts
In these and other instances there may be also some exhibition of our Lord’s divine and miraculous powers, but it is not too much to take them as evidences of the keenness of His perception and the fine sensibility of His faculties. Nor is it too much to assert that His Heart kept a marvelous store of thoughts by the help of His delicate senses and mind. Everything He saw, from the lily in the field to the lightning flash on high, were new revelations of some truth about God the Father, coming home to His Heart in fresh and vigorous experience. Every word He spoke revealed to His listeners the fruits of this experience in interesting and original teaching. “Jesus advanced in wisdom and age and grace.”
His Best Thought – His Mother
These facts about our Lord’s capacity of heart and powers of sense and mind will help us to appreciate the eagerness and fullness with which He treasured up the best of all His kept thoughts, the thoughts about His Mother, Mary. What experience of life can equal that which arises from the love and dependence of mother and son? The mother is the first experience a man has and it is the last to leave him. That is the closest, tenderest, liveliest experience which can thrill a human heart. Imagine then, if you can, the wealth of thoughts about His Mother in the treasury of the Heart of Jesus. He began living with her life. His Heart first beat from hers. If one of a multitude touched Him and He knew it, what shall be said of the sacred intimacy of the mother and child? Did not virtue go out from that to bless Mary and advance Jesus in wisdom?
His Richest Thought – His Mother
So in a thousand ways for thirty long years the delicate faculties of Jesus, made more keen and delicate by a son’s most perfect love, gathered and stored away new and ever better thoughts of Mary. His eyes first opened unto hers in life and to hers they turned when about to close in death. Her voice made the first and sweetest music in His ears. Her arms enfolded Him and held Him to her lips in a mother’s first and loving embrace. When the young man in the Gospel ran up and knelt before our Lord with great reverence, asking what he should do to receive life everlasting, “Jesus looking on him, loved him.” What, therefore, were the thoughts which filled His Heart when His Mother’s love enveloped Him and dominated His whole being? The thoughts that love and youth lay away in the memory are the longest thoughts of one’s heart, and we may be quite certain that when perfect Son and perfect Mother grew up together in more than thirty years of the closest ties, the Heart of Jesus and the heart of Mary both were enriched daily with abiding memories.
His Holiest Thought – His Mother
Then, lastly and most of all, there was every reason why Jesus should keep Mary, His Mother, in His Heart. He was sent to the lost sheep of Israel. The Good Shepherd knew all His sheep, even those who were not of His fold, and He had come to gather them all back from their wanderings abroad. Up and down the length of Palestine He went in search of His lost sheep. He was footsore and weary with the search, but He would not desist. One final effort He would make to draw all to the fold. Ah, that was a rough way our Shepherd traveled and that was a steep height He climbed! The thorns pierced His Head and He could not disentangle them. Feet and hands were held fast, and our Shepherd could travel no further, but His voice could still be heard and His Heart’s love could still go forth over the dark ways and the desert wilds of the world and of all time, crying to His lost sheep to come back. In His Heart’s vision He could see them all, as well those that were lost forever as those that came home soiled and bedraggled. He would know them; “I know Mine and Mine know Me.” But most of all would He know the snow-white lamb of His flock, the one whose fleeces had never been touched with the faintest stain, the one whom He had shepherded from all eternity and kept forever in His fold. In His last, agonizing search for His lost sheep His Heart would find a place in It for His immaculate Mother. She loved her Son and Shepherd and kept Him in her heart, and He loved His Mother and the one whom He saved most perfectly and gave her a special place in His Heart. Mary, His Mother, was the best of the kept thoughts of Jesus.