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He said to them in reply, “My mother and my brothers
are those who hear the word of God and act on it.”
Jesus pointed to his disciples as he said this, suggesting that they were among those who heard the word of God and acted on it. They were among those who did the will of the Father of Jesus in heaven and were therefore his brothers and sisters and mother. But Jesus was not simply saying that he liked how his disciples were acting and so decided to welcome them into the family.
“Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” Pointing to his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.” (see Matthew 12:48-50).
After all, how could we ever behave in such a way as to be worthy to be brothers and sisters of Jesus? How could we act so well as to deserve to call God our Father and not merely a Father? And, in any case, were the disciples themselves really living up to such a standard?
Even the disciples demonstrated that of themselves they were all to able to act in ways that were not in keeping with the word of God. We think of Peter who tried to stand in the way of the Father's will for Jesus when Jesus began to explain that he would be crucified. The disciples all still had much in them that was not conformed to Jesus, much in them that the Father would not yet be able to recognize as the image of his Son.
The privilege of being brothers and sisters of Jesus was not something even the disciples could produce for themselves. And yet Jesus saw more in them than their failures. He saw that although they may have failed in responding to God's will in many ways they were in fact among those who heard the word of God and responded precisely by making Jesus himself the center of their lives. On their own they had fumbled and failed, but with Jesus they began to learn that what was impossible on their own was possible for God to do in them.
“Who then can be saved?”
But Jesus looked at them and said,
“With man this is impossible,
but with God all things are possible.” (see Matthew 19:25-26).
In the end, the only way that we can become brothers and sisters of Jesus is by God's own gift of grace. It was to this gift that the disciples responded, and this gift that was even then making them grow, albeit gradually, into the image of Jesus. Jesus himself was guiding them to make a response to the offer of grace by becoming, like him, faithful sons and daughters of the Father in heaven.
you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God (see Romans 8:15-16).
It is properly speaking only the Spirit who makes us sons of daughters in the Son. He himself is the one who teaches us to respond to God as Father, and to do his will and keep his word. By the Spirit's gift the fidelity of the only begotten Son is something in which we are made able to share. We don't earn our way into his family. It is something that can only be freely given. Yet it requires us to make a response, not of perfection, but of faith, just as the disciples did. It requires that we place Jesus himself at the center of our lives and that we make following him our most important priority. When we do so we will be guided by Jesus, just as the disciples were, to let the gift we have been given bear fruit.
Mary was the mother of Jesus in the natural sense, but also in that she heard the word of God and acted on it. We have seen that she could have only made this perfect response in virtue the grace that she had already received, the grace by which the angel named her, "Hail, full of grace" (see Luke 1:28). Mary was privileged to make this response first and perfectly in order that she could be a model and teacher for those who would become her sons and daughters, the brothers and sisters of her son. We too can be so united to her that we can in some sense share in her own motherhood of Jesus. Imagine if the grace that allowed Mary to bring Jesus to the world was allowed to manifest in each of us! Imagine if we gave birth and nourished and guided the formation of the image of Jesus all around us in our own day and age. This would be something quite different from mere apologetics, however true, or doctrine, however correct. It would be something irresistibly life-giving.
May the Holy Spirit himself guide us to learn to respond to the God who has made us his Father, to be conformed more and more to the image of the Son. May Mary show us the way to open ourselves to the full possibilities for our own response of faith to the word of God, that we too might help bring Jesus more fully into our world today.
Like a stream is the king’s heart in the hand of the LORD;
wherever it pleases him, he directs it.
All the ways of a man may be right in his own eyes,
but it is the LORD who proves hearts.
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