Tuesday in the Twenty-Fifth Week of Ordinary Time at Mississippi Abbey

Scripture Readings: Prov 21:1-6, 10-13;  Lk 8:19-21

“My mother and my brother are those who hear the word of God and act on it.”

Those who hear the word of God are part of a people, a community. The community is formed around the word, the story. That story illumines our moral perception to tell us what we should pay attention to. The story gives us a distinctive set of dispositions to tell us how to act and to be; and it gives us the norms for our personal Christian identity, of who we are to be.  That community, intimately referred to as mother and brother, is thereby the body of Christ. Membership is for those who hear and act; it is for those who make membership their identity. Membership, then, is for those who take seriously what Christ took seriously. Therefore, all whose one aim in life is to make God’s will their will are the true kindred of Jesus.

It is when a woman puts her will in line with God’s will by the help of the Holy Spirit that real kinship begins.