Memorial of Saint Francis de Sales, Bishop and Doctor of the Church
In the gospel passage for today, Jesus is told by his disciples that his mother and brothers are standing outside the place where they are meeting. He responds by saying that the people gathered there are his mother and his brothers. This event raises a number of questions. Is Jesus saying that we should neglect our families? Doesn’t he think that families are important? If his family were in trouble wouldn’t he help them? Shouldn’t he favor the needs of his family over those of strangers?
Reflecting on this passage, it strikes me that Jesus is not denying that he has a family—that he has mothers and brothers who have a claim on him; but he is using this occasion to make a deep spiritual point. When we are baptized as Christians into the Church, we acquire a new family, which goes beyond our family, national, and cultural identities. This new family is united not by ties of blood but by the spirit of God. More specifically, the people in this family (i.e. all Christians) are united by their love for God and their willingness to do God’s will. It is important for us to see that the ties that we have to others in this new family ultimately are more important that the ties we had on the basis of blood, for ultimately our membership in the Church unites us to others, while our identity outside the Church often divides us from others.
In both Jesus’ time and our own, families were considered very important. Jesus does not intend to say that families are unimportant. In fact, strong families are important because it is often within families that people begin to learn how to serve God, but it is through the Church that we receive the sacraments. And it is in the Church that we learn how to live as Christ in the world and learn to do God’s will. Jesus stated elsewhere that the greatest commandment was to love God above all things (Matthew 22: 37-8). If there are things in our lives that are getting in the way of that – whether they are family or something else – then we are not doing what Jesus commands.
One concrete conclusion of the gospel reading is that we are called to reach out beyond our natural families or social groups to those on the outside so that our social interactions do not become insular and self-absorbed. This means reaching out not only to others in our circle of friends, colleagues, and family but also to those who on the surface seem to have little in common with us because they are outside our social, economic, and even religious group. Let us pray today for the grace to follow Jesus’ command to do God’s will through our hospitality towards others and our participation in the life of the Church.
- Joel Schickel