Friends, in today’s Gospel Jesus identifies us as his disciples. So what do we discover about ourselves? First, that we are a chosen
race. As I’ve said many times, our culture puts a huge premium on
choice, our choice, personal choice. We care, above all, about freedom,
self-direction, and
autonomy.
But
the Bible is eminently clear that what matters above all is not our
choice but God’s choice. We Christians, we followers of Jesus, have been
chosen by God for God’s purposes. And this choice is not a matter of
reward, as though we are being singled out because of our gifts. Just
the contrary.
Your
life is not about you. Your will nestles in an infinitely higher will.
Your mind is an ingredient in an infinitely more capacious mind. And so
the primary question of your life is not, "What do I want?" but rather,
"What does God want?"
Tuesday of the Third Week in Ordinary Time
Lectionary: 318
Brothers and sisters:
Since the law has only a shadow of the good things to come,
and not the very image of them, it can never make perfect
those who come to worship by the same sacrifices
that they offer continually each year.
Otherwise, would not the sacrifices have ceased to be offered,
since the worshipers, once cleansed, would no longer
have had any consciousness of sins?
But in those sacrifices there is only a yearly remembrance of sins,
for it is impossible that the blood of bulls and goats
take away sins.
For this reason, when he came into the world, he said:
Sacrifice and offering you did not desire,
but a body you prepared for me;
in burnt offerings and sin offerings you took no delight.
Then I said, As is written of me in the scroll,
Behold, I come to do your will, O God.First he says,
Sacrifices and offerings,
burnt offerings and sin offerings,
you neither desired nor delighted in.These are offered according to the law.
Then he says,
Behold, I come to do your will.He takes away the first to establish the second.
By this "will," we have been consecrated
through the offering of the Body of Jesus Christ once for all.
The mother of Jesus and his brothers arrived at the house.
Standing outside, they sent word to Jesus and called him.
A crowd seated around him told him,
"Your mother and your brothers and your sisters
are outside asking for you."
But he said to them in reply,
"Who are my mother and my brothers?"
And looking around at those seated in the circle he said,
"Here are my mother and my brothers.
For whoever does the will of God
is my brother and sister and mother."
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