Tuesday of the Twenty-fifth Week in Ordinary Time
September 26, 2023
Today’s Readings:
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/092623.cfm
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, Luke gives us a jolt with this Gospel passage that has always disturbed me:
The mother of Jesus and his brothers came to him
Luke 8:19-21
but were unable to join him because of the crowd.
He was told, “Your mother and your brothers are standing outside
and they wish to see you.”
He said to them in reply, “My mother and my brothers
are those who hear the word of God and act on it.”
Honestly, I don’t want Jesus to sound officious like that with his family! I want him to wiggle through the crushing crowd and run into Mary’s loving arms. I want him to hug his mom to bits and pummel his little brothers on the back with callow delight.
And you know what – I think that might be exactly what Jesus did, on the way uttering the seemingly callous phrase which Luke has isolated and immortalized.
Like all scripture passages, we can read this one in the slant of our own light. At the same time, it is important to access the wisdom of scripture scholars in order to understand depths we might not otherwise discern. There is a scholarly consensus that this Lucan passage is intended to show us how radically dedicated Jesus was to his mission. The passage affirms that the mission is more important even than family ties … in other words, more important than anything. For thirty years Jesus had lived a quiet life somewhere within his mother’s circle of care. In this Gospel, that quiet time is over and he is on the path to his Passion, Death, and Resurrection.
I understand that radicality and the courage it takes to live it. I failed at it once (at least) but learned immensely from the failure.
When I was a young religious, there was a call for US nuns to minister in Nicaragua. I wanted to answer that call. When I told my mother about my emerging decision, she froze in time. My father had died just about a year and a half before. The thought of also “losing” me to a socio-politically volatile Central America traumatized my mom.
But my mom was so brave. She didn’t say, “Don’t go.” She simply said, “Take me with you. I can cook for all of you.”
Mom and I at the 41st Eucharistic Congress
Philadelphia (1976)
Needless to say, I wasn’t going to take my mom into a political boiler in order to satisfy my plans. But I also wasn’t going to leave her alone in the thinly-veiled desperation of her offer. I didn’t go to Nicaragua and, like Robert Frost’s split road, that has made a profound difference in my life.
That decision almost fifty years ago was a good one, and opened the way for me into other opportunities to serve God’s people. The Gospel did not suffer because of my hesitations or my mother’s. We both trusted our humanity that had, for all our lives, been directed toward God’s love.
But at this juncture in Jesus’s life, the Gospel demands that he open his heart beyond any familial or personal ties in order to embrace all people in the Gospel.
There are frequent times in each of our lives when we must choose for the largeness of the Gospel over limited self-interest. Enriching ourselves daily in scriptural wisdom will strengthen us to respond generously at those times.
Prose: Pope Francis on praying with the scriptures:
Through prayer a new incarnation of the Word takes place. And we are the “tabernacles” where the words of God want to be welcomed and preserved, so that they may visit the world. This is why we must approach the Bible without ulterior motives, without exploiting it. The believer does not turn to the Holy Scriptures to support his or her own philosophical and moral view, but because he or she hopes for an encounter; the believer knows that those words were written in the Holy Spirit, and that therefore in that same Spirit they must be welcomed and understood, so that the encounter can occur.
Music: O Word of God – Ricky Manolo – In this hymn, passages from the Psalms – snippets of God’s Word – are sung in a round within the plea for God’s Word to come into our hearts.
O Word of God, come into this space.
O Word of God, come send us your grace.
Open our minds; show us your truth.
Transform our lives anew.
O Word of God, come into this space.
O Word of God, come send us your grace.
Open our minds; show us your truth.
Transform our lives anew.
Here I am, O Lord my God
I come to do your Will.
Blessed are the poor in spirit,
the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs.
To the upright, I will show
the saving power of God.
Let all the nations
praise You, O God.
Let all the nations praise You.
The Lord is my shepherd,
there is nothing I shall want.
Lavish Mercy 