A reading from the holy Gospel according to Mark
“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.”
In today’s Gospel, the mother and brothers of Jesus arrive where he his preaching and send word through the crowd to him that they are there. Jesus’ reply seems harsh to his family. Yet, what he says does not exclude them but rather embraces them within the family of those who do the will of God. Saint Paul quotes the psalmist in the first reading: “First he says, Sacrifices and offerings, burnt offerings and sin offerings, you neither desired nor delighted in.” Referring then to Jesus, Paul 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.”
God, help me understand your will and through that understanding, a desire to do it. Grant me the grace today to see you in the faces of people I meet and in all of the day’s decisions. With the Morning Offering, I pray: “O Jesus, through the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I offer You my prayers, works, joys, and sufferings of this day in union with the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass throughout the world.”
From today’s Psalm: “Here am I Lord; I come to do your will. Your justice I kept not hid within my heart; your faithfulness and your salvation I have spoken of; I have made no secret of your kindness and your truth in the vast assembly.” Stay with me, Lord. Saint Francis de Sales, pray for us!
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.