Here are my mother and my brothers and my sisters…

Blood ties are very important to us. Aren’t they? Of course they are.

We greatly appreciate the members of our family, our brothers and sisters, our mothers and fathers, our other relatives.

And in today’s gospel, Jesus was speaking to a group of His disciples when someone said that His mother and brothers were outside and asking to speak to Him (Matt 12:46). Typically, you would think that most people would excuse themselves and say: I’ll be right back. My mother wants to speak to Me, but Jesus is not typical in any way. Instead of stopping and going outside to talk with His mother and brothers, who came seeking to talk with Him, He turns this question into another question to the man who told Him this. He asks a rhetorical question: Who is my mother and who are my brothers? He certainly isn’t speaking about His biological mother or His brothers, who were really His half-brothers since they were related to Him only by St. Joseph who was husband of His mother.

In the gospel reading, Jesus points to a group of people who are even more important to him than the members of his earthly family. Pointing to his disciples, to all of us, He says: ‘Here are my mother and my brothers and my sisters’.

He is talking about those who believe in Him, and by believing in Him, they do what He asks. Jesus is not being disrespectful or rude to His mother or His brothers. Perhaps after He said this, He went outside to speak with them. These verses don’t say that He totally ignored her either. We can’t read into the text what is not there.

Do you know what I am thinking of now?

If Jesus looked at your and my life, how would He know that we’re related to His Father? It would be obvious if we were obeying His Father, God the Father, in heaven. If we were nothing like our heavenly Father at all, and if we didn’t obey what God commanded, then clearly we wouldn’t be Jesus’ brothers & sisters because Jesus says that whoever does the will of the Father are His mother, brothers, and sisters. In other words, there’s a family resemblance, not by the way they look necessarily, but by the family customs: doing God the Father’s will. If we are doing the will of the Father, we must be related to Him, and if we’re related to God the Father by all we do and by adoption in our baptism (Eph 1:5), then we are certainly related to Jesus.

So, it’s not a matter of bloodline, but a matter of the family custom. It’s as simple as that.

But someone could say: Fr. Tomasz, what about if we may not succeed in doing God’s will all the time?

Well, my answer for that question is: as long as we hunger and thirst to do it, if our deepest desire is to do what God wants, then we are truly the Lord’s family, and, in virtue of that, we are His brothers and sisters, and, even, his mother. But we have to remember also, that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. So, desires are important but Jesus is calling today: Rise and rise again until lambs become lions!

Jesus calls us to be members of His new family, the family of His disciples. This is a family that is held together not by ties of blood but by the Holy Spirit. In hungering and thirsting to do God’s will, we open ourselves to the coming of the Holy Spirit, and that Spirit makes us brothers and sisters of Jesus and of each other, and sons and daughters of God.

Lord Jesus, please, help us to do Your Father’s will.