He said to them in reply, "My mother and my brothers
are those who hear the word of God and act on it."
We know that this was no slight to Mary, who was the model of perfect obedience to the divine word. She was the one who responded to the archangel with her fiat, and who made a practice of treasuring her encounters with the word of God in her heart. She was chosen to become the mother of Jesus. But the grace given to her for the sake of this choice, the fullness of grace in which she was herself was conceived, was what allowed her to be so open to the word of God as to conceive the word of God in her womb. She was, therefore, doubly God's mother, a mother in both the biological and spiritual sense.
What would it mean to act on the word of God so as to become related to Jesus like a mother? Fortunately we were given Mary precisely to be an example of how this should look, and the difference it can make in our own lives and in the world. Without an example of someone so perfectly open to the word, who let it completely alter the course of her life, and who did so without reservation, we probably would have assumed this metaphor was more about trite sentimentality than anything practical. At best we would have thought Jesus meant something like hearing and acted the word of God allowed us to have a close relationship with himself. And it does mean exactly that. But in Mary we can see the dense reality and implications it entails, above and beyond the initial burst of sentimentality it engenders. She possessed a closeness to her son that was second only to his closeness he had through his Spirit with the Father. Her connection to him had such concrete reality that not even the cross could cause her to recoil or run. This level of closeness could not be guaranteed by biology. But it was realized by the power of her response to the grace she had been given.
It is in Mary's spiritual motherhood that we are invited to share, allowing God's word to transform us, so that we too can become bearers of Jesus to the world. In addition, we are also invited to become his younger brothers and sisters, learning from him the paradigmatic example of how to live in a way pleasing to our Father in heaven. Let us learn to build our lives on the foundation of the word of God. May his worship take the central place within us, shaping our priorities, just as it did for the returning exiles about whom we read this morning.
The children of Israel–priests, Levites,
and the other returned exiles–
celebrated the dedication of this house of God with joy.
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