“For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.”
Matthew 12:50
Beautiful and true words that have attracted people everywhere since the Lord spoke them … but then there is an obvious question: how do we do the will the Father? How do we know what that is in concrete everyday situations?
In the first place, how do I stop doing what is clearly not the will of the Father, for example, committing sin? Then, how do choose the good and do that? But then the Lord takes this another big step: doing the will of the Father: that would be much more than just trying to be a good boy or good girl. Saint Luke, in his version of this teaching, unpacks this a bit more: “Blessed are they who hear the word of God and put it into practice.” We are really entering the heart of the Gospel message: how to do that?
Some might rashly think that these texts seem to sideline the mother of Jesus, but on the contrary; right from the start of Christ’s life, we hear how she is the one who listens and ponders the will of God. From the beginning, the Church has appreciated that she so faithfully heard the Word, that she could fully receive Him and gave birth to Him! The Word became flesh in her through her YES!
What she profoundly wants to do is to help us do the same.
This starts with attention to God around us, in others. Longing to see Christ in others – in love, in beauty, in truth! We need to cultivate a listening heart. Yet in our noisy world, it seems so hard. Really, today it almost seems to be countercultural to live with a heart that is open to the Lord!
So, our Mother Mary gives us the Rosary! Think of prayer of the Rosary as a quiet place of encounter, a meeting space where we can listen; for pondering and learning to listen to God. Of course, we have many intentions we pray for yet in faithfulness to prayer day by day, let’s let Mother Mary lead us into deeper love, into this attentiveness to Christ in us and around us always, guiding us.
“For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.”
Matthew 12:50
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