Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, Jesus
said in today’s Gospel reading words both puzzling and encouraging:
Whoever does the will of God is My
brother and sister and mother.
‘Whoever does the will of God‘ seems such an impersonal criterion;
whereas ‘my brother and sister and mother’ are words so personal and friendly. Of course, as you surely well know, we
become brothers and sisters of Christ when He, by His baptismal Gift of the
most Holy Spirit in Mother Church, draws us to Himself and so enables us to be nourished
with His heavenly food: a food which is not assimilated by the recipient, but which,
on the contrary, assimilates us to the One
thus giving Himself to us in Holy Communion.
In that way we become not only His
own brothers and sisters but also -- and most wonderfully -- adopted sons and daughters
of His heavenly Father.
As regards becoming His ‘mother’ that also is understandable in a Eucharistic
context in the sense that Christ is – so to speak – ‘conceived in us’ through
baptism and then lives in us and grows gradually to maturity by His ever-renewed
‘gift of the Holy Spirit’ in each fruitful reception of Holy Communion.
Nevertheless, for Jesus, the ultimate and
supremely decisive criterion of a true and acceptable disciple is, one ‘who
does the will of God’, and that is because Jesus spent His whole life on earth doing the
will of His Father for our salvation.
Therefore all who aspire to become disciples of Jesus must sincerely seek, intend, aspire,
to ‘do the will of God’ as explained by Jesus Himself.
You will have noticed that Jesus’ words to
describe a disciple of His, speak of a brother, a sister, and mother; but there
is no mention of ‘a father’.
Dear People of God, the relationship of Jesus
on earth with His Father in heaven was so mysterious, so intimate and so imperious,
that even Our Blessed Lady was, so to speak, ‘at a loss’, even ‘all at sea’,
with it at times, as we learn from the occasion when she thought it right to
reprove her Son Who had remained behind in the Temple at Jerusalem unknown to
herself and Saint Joseph. At that time
Jesus’ answer totally puzzled her:
Did
you not know that I must be in My Father’s house?
Those words ‘ in My Father’s house’ can also
mean, about my Father’s business and they
thus offered to one so contemplative as Mary something she would ponder over. Indeed, something she would ultimately
treasure when her Son finally left her and went with His disciples to preach His
Good News to the people. She could most certainly understand and would be
most humbly proud to know that on leaving her He was walking alone,
wholeheartedly -- ‘about His father’s business’ – all the way to Calvary.
So, brothers and sisters, dear fellow
disciples in Christ, Jesus words:
Whoever does the will of God is My brother
and sister and mother,
are both heavenly and earthly words, perfectly
befitting Him Who is God-become-Man for men: they are heavenly words of companionship, ‘Whoever does the will
of My Father’, and of God-pleasing personal love, where ‘My brother and
sister and mother’ are meant as true expressions of spontaneously human love, which is firmly established upon a
deep personal relationship, not founded on the shivering sands of carnal
passion.
‘Doing the will of God’ was the aim of the Law
under the Old covenant. St. Paul
discussed that question of the role of the old Law and his teaching is
admirably summed up by the late C.H. Dodd in one of his early works:
‘Every individual of the human race is so
entangled in the general “wrongness” that he has no power left to himself to
avoid committing acts which, whether he knows it or not, add to the sum of
wrong. To know these acts are wrong does
not prevent him from doing them, but it does imprint upon his conscience, in
the indelible characters of shame and guilt, the contrast of good and
evil. It brings “sin” home, from being a
general state of the human race, to be a conscious burden upon the mind of the
individual. And Paul sees that it is a
great advance to have discovered sin in one’s own heart as guilt. Only the man who is conscious of his guilt
can be saved from the sin of which he is guilty.’
That ‘saving from sin’ comes to us, of course,
through the death of the only sublimely Perfect Man, His Resurrection and Ascension, His
bequeathed sacrament of Baptism; and today, our own efforts to conform
our behaviour to God’s will in all circumstances ... all of which serves, to quote
Saint Paul (Ephesians 4:12-13):
To equip the holy ones for the work of
ministry, for building up the body of Christ until we all attain to the unity
of faith and knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the extent of the full stature of Christ;
or, in simpler words, to become truly adopted sons
and daughters of God the Father.
I do not want to keep you unduly, dear fellow
disciples of Jesus, but I also would like to encourage your continued thinking about today’s Scripture readings;
therefore, just notice that our first reading centred on God the Father:
The Lord God called to the man and said to
him, “Where are you?”.
Our second, on God the Son:
He who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us
also with Jesus … so do not lose heart.
And our third reading, centred on the Holy
Spirit:
Whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin.
