My mother and brothers are those who hear the word of God and put it into practice
We do not choose our relations. We are born into a family by specific parents. We are lucky if we have a loving and caring mother or father or brothers and sisters. We are lucky if they were able to care for us. We are lucky if we are proud of our families because we cannot determine their reputation. We cannot blame those who are born vagabond or of parents on drugs, for it was not their choice. We could not change the course of our history and become children of a king, even if we wanted to.
The wonderful thing is that with God it is different. It is in our power to choose to be the children of the King of kings, the Lord of the universe. We can choose to be his brothers and sisters. And this is what we hear in the gospel of today: Jesus points to his disciples and says, "Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother."
We cannot choose to do this through our own power of judgment or strength of will. We do so because God has granted us this possibility through his Son. It is he who granted us what we could not attain by our own effort. Quite often, what we consider to be the right thing according to our own judgment, is not so in the eyes of God. We heard from the book of Wisdom in the first reading, that: “All the ways of a man may be right in his own eyes, but it is the Lord who proves hearts... To do what is right and just is more acceptable to the LORD than sacrifice.” That is why we need constantly to ask for divine wisdom in discerning the right course of action and doing it. We pray with the inspired words of today’s Responsorial Psalm: “Guide me, Lord, in the way of your commands… Make me understand the way of your precepts, and I will meditate on your wondrous deeds… Give me discernment, that I may observe your law and keep it with all my heart.”
Hearing the word of God and putting it into practice will eventually lead us to what "no eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him" (1 Corinthians 2:9). What John says of the children of God, that is, the spiritual siblings of Christ, will become true of us: "Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is." ( 1 John 3:2).
