Readings: Exodus 14:21-15:1,202-21; Canticle Exodus 15; Matthew 12:46.48-50
We strive hard to love the members of our families, our brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, all our relatives, and we cherish being part of a family. But Jesus indicates a group of people who are even more important to him than the members of his own earthly family, more than Mary and Joseph. Pointing to his disciples, he says, “Here are my mother and my brothers and my sisters.” He defines disciples as those who do the will of his Father in heaven, as he has shown it by his teaching and by his life, death and resurrection. We can be, should become, members of his family.
Earlier, in the beatitudes, (Matthew 5) Jesus said “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,” in other words, blessed are those whose deepest desire is to do God’s will. That’s us! We may not succeed all the time in doing God’s will, but if our desire is to do what God wants, we are truly the Lord’s disciples, and, consequently, because of that, we are his brothers and sisters.
What Jesus wants is for us to become also members of another family, a new family, not to abandon our human family but to prioritize our relationships that can only grow in Him. Our family ties are held together not by bonds of human blood but by His own blood and by the Holy Spirit. When we hunger and thirst to do God’s will, we open ourselves to the Spirit who makes us brothers and sisters in the family of Jesus, sons and daughters of God.