Regína sacratíssimi Rosárii, ora pro nobis!
  

Ave Maria!
Third Sunday of Lent AD 2005
“Rather, blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it.”[1]

Ordinary of the Mass
Mass Text - Latin
Mass Text - English

    Today’s Gospel ends on something of a strange note.  A woman in the crowd says something complimentary about the Blessed Mother of Jesus, and Jesus appears to rebuke her.  It seems a “tad” out of character to Catholic ears, for we are of the mindset that there cannot be enough praise for the Virgin Mother of God, and we tend to have a deep appreciation of the importance of family life.  But our Lord’s statement was not made in isolation.  Earlier, when informed that His Mother and brethren were outside waiting to see Him, He made the similar statement:

    My mother and my brethren are they who hear the word of God and do it.[2]

and a few chapters later in Saint Luke’s Gospel we read:

    If any man come to me, and hate not his father and mother and wife and children and brethren and sisters, yea and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.. And whosoever doth not carry his cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.”[3]

    Jesus even seems to make this a condition of salvation:

    every one that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands for my name’s sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall possess life everlasting.[4]

    What can our Lord possibly be saying?  Everything we know about Jesus Christ tells us that He must have held His Blessed Mother in the greatest of esteem, and likewise that He gave high importance to the integrity of the family.  Indeed, it was our Lord who raised marriage to the dignity of a Sacrament, and contravened the laxity of Moses which allowed a Jewish man to divorce his wife if he wasn’t pleased with her.

    Blessed indeed was she who was privileged to be the physical Mother of God.  And yet not she alone.  Blessed too were all those who conceived that same Word spiritually by the faith that comes from hearing, and who by their good works strove to bring it to birth and, as it were, to nourish it in their hearts and in the hearts of their fellow men.[5]

    Saint John Chrysostom, fourth century Patriarch of Constantinople, suggests that our Lord was issuing a warning.  Our Lord’s countrymen, the Jewish people of the Old Testament, put a great deal of stock in the fact that they were the descendants of Abraham;  perhaps thinking that this relationship put them in a spiritually privileged position where salvation was more or less assured.  But, to the contrary, said Saint John:

    No one can hope for salvation from anything after divine grace, except his own virtues.  If relationship to [Jesus] had been useful to Mary by itself, it would have been useful also to the Jews, who were Christ’s relatives according to the flesh; it would have been useful for the city in which He was born;  it would have been useful to His close relatives.  But.... His country, indeed, gained nothing from being His fatherland and was destroyed by fire;  His fellow citizens were killed and perished miserably;  His relatives according to the flesh gained nothing for salvation, lacking the protection of virtue.  But the Apostles became the most renowned of all, since by obedience they gained His true friendship and desired companionship.  Thus we are to understand that faith is always necessary to us, and a life shining with virtues; this alone can save us.[6]

    Did our Lord intend us to “hate” our parents, our spouses, and our children?  Certainly not, not even if they happen to be grievous sinners, for God’s great desire is the repentance of sinners, and not their condemnation.  Is there something evil about having a home or a little property to cultivate?  Again, the answer is no, for the earth and its produce are God’s creations—intended for human stewardship.

    The word “hate” is clearly hyperbole—the use of a extreme word to make a point.  Here our Lord is reminding us of two things.  Firstly, that God must be the most important thing in our lives.  There is a great deal of wisdom in voluntarily giving up the use worldly things, if, by doing so, we can draw closer to God.  But, even those worldly things which we retain may be taken away from us, either by the vicissitudes of life or through persecution because of our following of Christ.  He is telling us that if we are to remain capable of picking up His cross and following Him, we must be able to relinquish our hold on human relationships and possessions—not that we “hate” them in the literal sense, but that we despise them to the point of being able to let them go if that becomes necessary for the sake of God’s Kingdom.

    Secondly, our Lord is reminding us that even if we never have to make the choice to give up an important relationship or to divest ourselves of some piece of property, we must beware of over attachment to the things of the world.  It is not at all difficult to become so absorbed in the worldly pursuit of people and things that we find little or no time for God.  Even things which are positively good in themselves can become detrimental if they distract us from our relationship with God.  As we heard Saint Paul say this morning, “covetousness”—the desire to acquire more and more material things—is a form of idolatry.[7]  We must never allow ourselves to get to the point of worshipping our possessions as though they were false gods!

    If our Lord’s words seem a bit frightening to us—this idea of “hating” what we naturally love;  or the idea of carrying His cross—we ought to reflect, instead, on the great opportunity presented to us.  Even though we are not of the tribe of Abraham, nor of the kingly house of David, we are still capable of being mother, or brother, or sister to Jesus Christ.  What we lack in heredity can be made up in faith and perseverance.  Our Lord’s natural relatives gained nothing at all by being related to Him—it was the Apostles and those who followed after them who gained everything—the “true friendship and companionship” of almighty God—by virtue of their obedience.  In us as in Mary herself, the word of God is conceived in faith, born through good works, and nourished in our hearts.

“Blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it.”

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