Third Tuesday in Ordinary Time
Tuesday, January 28, 2025
Third Week in Ordinary Time
Memorial of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Priest and Doctor of the Church
Heb 10:1-10/Mk 3:31-35 (Lectionary #318)
In Mark’s next incident we can see how Jesus’ family could think he was crazy! Jesus wouldn’t stop talking even long enough to eat. “His mother and his brothers came; and standing outside, sent word to him” that he should come home to dinner.
We would expect a normal son to say, “Okay, mother, I’ll be home in a minute.” But Jesus said, “My mother? My brothers? Who are my mother and brothers?” And then, “gazing around him,” he said, “These are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother!”
We are tempted to think that when Jesus finally did go home, Mary may have said to him as any Jewish mother would have, even one “conceived without sin”: “So who is your mother? Who are your brothers? Go find some other woman who ‘does the will of God’ and let her give you your supper!”
Then, of course, she sat him down and made him eat until he cried for mercy.
Here again we have a very human Jesus saying something arrestingly divine. Would any of us dare to claim to be as close to Jesus, as much a part of his family, as his own mother was? But he is the one who says it. We just can’t bring ourselves to accept the mystery of what “grace” really is. Grace is the favor of sharing in the divine life of God. If we think we fully understand what that means, we don’t even understand what there is to understand!
By grace we “become Christ.” We become his real body. “In him” we are made true sons and daughters of the Father. His own Spirit bears witness to that within us: “Because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” (Romans 8:16; Galatians 4:6). Do we claim this?
How do we feel about claiming to be the “light of the world” (Matthew 5:14)? About claiming to be “one” with God and with each other “in God” as the Father is in Jesus and Jesus is in the Father (John 17:21)? About declaring that because we believe in him we can do the works that Jesus does; and, in fact, can do “greater works than these” (John 14:12)?
Don’t we feel crazy, making claims like those? But it is Jesus who says it, not us. We just have a hard time taking him seriously. The next passage we read in Mark will tell us why.
Initiative: Open your mind to mystery. Don’t think you understand what you were taught in “religion class.” Keep asking the Holy Spirit to enlighten you.
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