A week ago in our Sunday Gospel, with the parable of the Good Samaritan, the topic of discussion was identifying our neighbor. There was a lot of discussion about who was identified as neighbor in Jesus’ day. With all the social unrest in our own country in recent years, identifying our neighbor is also very relevant for us today. In today’s Gospel, Jesus asks: Who is my mother? Who are my brothers? Good questions to ask.
When Jesus’ was pointing to his disciples, saying that they were his brothers and his mother, I don’t think that Jesus was lessening the importance of his mother Mary and his earthly father Joseph. As Christ says elsewhere in the third chapter of Mark’s Gospel, “Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.” The family of our Lord Jesus Christ is eternal. It is a family that he gathers to himself. It is a family that we are a part of as his disciples. He welcomes us to his family to do his will because that is our destiny in our life of discipleship. To be faithful to our vocation as disciples, to be faithful to our purpose in life, we are to fulfill the hopes and dreams that God has in store for us. As members of Christ’s family, we are called to holiness. We are called to strive toward perfection. It is a perfection that we will never achieve, but we are to strive toward it and to do our best. At the end of our days, may Christ be able to say to us: “Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.”
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