251. Tenth Sunday of Ordinary Time (B)

Meditations no. 578 (unofficial computer-aided translation)

The true family of Jesus.

ACCOMPANIED BY the Apostles he had just chosen, Jesus returned home. And, as had happened on so many occasions in the course of his public life, the crowd gathered again, so that they could not even eat. Among that crowd there was everything: faithful followers, some relatives of Jesus who did not believe in him, and avowed enemies who accused him of collusion with demons. His mother and other close relatives also arrived. Unable to enter the house, because of the crowd, they sent word to Jesus of his presence: “Look, your mother, your brothers, and your sisters are looking for you outside.” Our Lord answers the news with a surprising question: Who are my mother and who are my brothers? And looking at those who were sitting around him, he says, “These are my mother and my brothers; whoever does the will of God, that is my brother and my sister and my mother.”

Certainly, as St. Cyril of Alexandria warns, “no one can think that Christ would disdain the honor due to his mother, or that he would despise love for his brothers. He himself actually laid down a law through Moses that openly says, ‘Honor your father and your mother, that you may be happy.’ So how could he who commanded us to love one another, not only our brothers and sisters, but even our enemies, disdain love for brothers?” Jesus simply takes this opportunity to raise the sights of his listeners and explain where the closest familiarity with him lies.

The kingdom that Our Lord comes to constitute is not built, like many earthly kingdoms, on merely human bonds, in which favoritism prevails towards those of one’s own blood and where influences by kinship take precedence to obtain perks or material advantages.

The true relatives of Jesus are those who receive his Gospel and make it the life of their lives. This acceptance is effected by faith and the sacraments. Sent by Christ from the bosom of the Father, in Baptism - and also in Confirmation - the Holy Spirit is poured out on us, configuring us to Jesus. “At that moment a new life really begins. To become Christians is something more than a cosmetic operation, which would add some beauty to an already more or less complete existence. It is a new beginning, it is to be born again: death and resurrection”. The baptized, because they have received the Spirit of the Son, have in themselves “that Spirit and can speak like Jesus and with Jesus as true children to their Father; they can say Abba because they have become children in the Son”. We are no longer just images, but children of God. Adopted children, it is often said, to indicate that it is a free gift, even though - unlike the adoptions of this world - it implies receiving a true participation in divine life.

This configuration to Christ is perfected in the Holy Eucharist, where we are assimilated to the food we eat; that is, to Jesus. And our Father taught us that, if we are docile to the Holy Spirit, the image of Christ will be formed more and more in us and thus we will draw closer and closer to God the Father.

The fact that we relate to God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit means that we have been introduced into the house, into the intimacy of God, which strangers do not know. As St. Paul says, we are not strangers and upstarts, but (…) members of the family of God.

Exceeding the tasks entrusted to us by our heavenly Father.

AS God’s true family, we are citizens of heaven, where we walk. When, by the Lord’s mercy, we get there, we will not feel strangers, as if we were admitted to a palace where strange and uncomfortable etiquette rules, or orphans of a cold asylum. We will arrive at our true home, the Father’s house, warm and endearing. We will then discover that it is on this earth that we are truly strangers and pilgrims.

It is true that what we will be has not yet been revealed. Saint Paul warns us that only in glory, when Christ (…) is revealed, then you too will appear glorious with him. But it is equally true that from now on we are children of God, members of his family. And this entails, already in this life, a whole way of treating God and of considering his things as our own.

Our Father made us notice how people talk to the people in their family. We talk to the father, the mother, the wife, the husband, the brother. And he advised us to conduct ourselves in this way with God, certain that He listens to us and responds to us; and we will attend to Him and open our conscience to a humble conversation, to confidently relate to Him everything that beats in our head and in our heart: joys, sorrows, hopes, disappointments, successes, failures, and even the smallest details of our day. Because we will have seen that everything that is ours interests our Heavenly Father. To underline that familiar tone of our conversation with God, when referring to the most appropriate place for prayer, the church or the oratory, he warned: I make an effort not to call it a chapel, so that it will stand out more clearly that it is not a place to be, with the packaging of an official ceremony, but to raise the mind in recollection and intimacy to heaven.

God is interested in everything that is ours. And we are personally interested in everything that is his, which is also ours, because we are of his family. Hence the style, at once devoted and joyful, with which we cultivate this world - the field of our heavenly Father, whom he has given us as an inheritance - and strive to expand his kingdom. We do so with personal initiative, sharpening our ingenuity. Freely - as children, I insist, not as slaves - each one must willingly exceed this task, without the need for anyone to pressure or watch him, without any coercion, because I feel like it.

God our Lord, in calling us to the Work, requires us to fight to be saints. Personal holiness: this has been my recipe from the beginning, because only to the extent that we are united to the Lord will our task be effective.

Do not lose yourselves in great considerations of heroism. Listen to the reality of each day, striving for perfection in ordinary work. There God awaits us. Every day we have the opportunity for our answer to be affirmative. And that affirmation must be heroic, trying to exceed oneself, without setting limits.

To learn from the Virgin to fulfill God’s Will at all times.

WHEN the Lord qualifies an exclusively natural reference addressed to his Mother, he in no way excludes the Blessed Virgin from the divine family. He limits himself to indicating the profound reason why she has the most intimate relationship with God, as Daughter, Mother and Bride. Jesus points out that “familiarity with the Lord is not shown in kinship according to the flesh, but is realized in the fulfillment of God’s will”. And in fact, “this is what the Lord extols in her: that she did the will of her Father (…). It is as if he were saying: and my mother, whom you proclaim blessed, is so precisely because of her observance of the word of God”. The Virgin Mary is the creature who most faithfully fulfilled the Will of God; and she became his Mother because, “full of faith and having conceived Christ in her mind rather than in her womb, she said: ‘Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be done to me according to your word.’” By accepting and making God’s plans her own, Mary begins to be the Mother of God, and also our Mother.

As the last Ecumenical Council teaches, “conceiving Christ, begetting him, nourishing him, presenting him in the temple to the Father, suffering with his Son while he died on the Cross, he cooperated in a completely unique way, through obedience, faith, hope and ardent charity, in the restoration of the supernatural life of souls. For this reason she is our Mother in the order of grace”. Jesus solemnly proclaimed this motherhood when, from the Cross, he said to Mary: Woman, here is your son. And then to Saint John: here is your mother.

The Lord, who has introduced us into his family, also wanted to give “to the life of Christians a dimension of home that only the Blessed Virgin is capable of awakening”. The presence of Holy Mary gives our lives a cordial, friendly tone: interior struggles are never a harsh, cold, implacable combat. Even when we fall in battle, getting up is easier for us than for the prodigal son, who, “if he had had his mother alive, would either not have left his father’s house or would have returned to it sooner than he returned”.

We have a good experience of this maternal tenderness in the Work, where we have always been-like Jesus-attached to his Mother, Mary, the Mother of God, who has been the Mother of Opus Dei, the Queen of Opus Dei, our beauty. … Filially attached to the Mother of God, we have not lacked her smile in difficult moments either.

To tell the truth, everywhere, “Christians have always sought the smile of Our Lady … This smile of Mary is for everyone; but it is addressed especially to those who suffer, so that they may find comfort and peace in her. To seek Mary’s smile is not devout or outdated sentimentality, but rather the right expression of the living and profoundly human relationship that unites us with the one Christ has given us as Mother.”

Looking at the Virgin, we learn to treat the God who admits us into his home, into his intimacy, in familiarity. Therefore, when we feel dry, clumsy and awkward, who is going to be a better teacher of love for God than this Queen, this Lady, this Mother, who has the most intimate relationship with the Trinity: Daughter of God the Father, Mother of God the Son, Spouse of God the Holy Spirit?

As a result of this time of prayer, perhaps we can make the resolution to give Our Lady a gift with more filial affection, taking better care of some of the Marian Norms.