Following Jesus as his Family Members, Sixteenth Tuesday (I), July 23, 2019

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Tuesday of the Sixteenth Week in Ordinary Time, Year I
Memorial of St. Bridget of Sweden
July 23, 2019
Ex 14:21-15:1, Ex 15, Mt 12:46-50

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

The following points were attempted in this homily: 

• Jesus entered our world, we see in today’s Gospel, to found a family composed of those who do the will of his Father as Jesus does. Jesus’ words, his fundamental message upon coming into the world, were, as the Letter to the Hebrews reminds us, “Behold, I have come to do your will, O God” (Heb 10:7). When Mary and Jesus’ relatives (all referred to in the composite by “brothers”) had come to see Jesus, Jesus used their visit as an opportunity to speak about a far more important bond than blood. He wanted to speak his plan for us spiritually to be bound to him through doing the will of the Father.
• We know that that family comes into existence through the incredible miracle of baptism. We ponder just how great baptism is in today’s first reading. Our imaginations are pushed to the wondrous brink when we meditate on the Israelites’ walking through the Red Sea at the bottom of the sea bed with walls of water on the left and the right. But as great a miracle as that was, what God has done for us through the exodus of the waters of baptism is even greater, as he’s led us on a passover from alienation to God through original sin to divine filiation. It’s not enough, however, for us to remain just ontological sons and daughters of God through baptism. Jesus wants us to become moral children as well, those who identity is shown by how they obey the heavenly Father. That’s what the Gospel is about.
• To the one who told him that his mother and brothers were outside hoping to see him, Jesus said, “’Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?’ Stretching out his hand toward his disciples, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers.For whoever does the will of my heavenly Father is my brother, and sister, and mother.’” At a superficial level, it could seem as if Jesus were denigrating his mother and cousins, but rather, he was specifically praising his mother and the bond she had with him, just like he did when he responded to a woman who praised her womb for having borne him and her breasts for having nursed him. Mary’s whole life can be encapsulated by her words to God through the Archangel Gabriel, “Let it be done to me according to your word.” Mary is the exemplar of all of those who do the Father’s will, or as Jesus responded to the anonymous woman praising her for her physical relationship with him, “Blessed are they who hear the word of God and observe it.” As St. Athanasius once commented, before she had ever conceived the Word in her womb, she had conceived him in her heart, as a doer of God’s word and will. We don’t know much about Jesus’ relatives. We know that later they tried to seize him because they thought he was out of his mind, and so it’s possible that Jesus was trying to convert them to doing the Father’s will together with him and his mother. But Jesus was certainly trying to convert his listeners and us to what it takes to become his family members.
• But Jesus says something startling in the Gospel. We can somewhat understand how he might call us his “brother and sister” through imitating him and entering into his filial obedience of the Father. But he also says that the one who does the will of his heavenly Father is “my mother” as well. To understand what this means, we need to go back to St. Ambrose. Even though there’s only one mother of Jesus in the flesh, every Christian believer, Saint Ambrose told us, in some way meant to become Christ’s spiritual mother, someone who interiorly conceives and gives birth to the word of God: “Thus, what took place for Mary can daily take place in each of us, in the hearing of the word and in the celebration of the sacraments,” Pope Benedict wrote, commenting on St. Ambrose’s insight. I want to repeat that last sentence. What took place for Mary can take place in each of us daily, when we hear the Word, when we receive the Word made flesh in the Sacrament of the Eucharist, when we allow Jesus and his word to grow within us in such a way that we give birth to him in loving actions. Each of us is meant to conceive the Word, to become pregnant with it, and let it grow so big that we have to “give it to the light” (dar a la luz, give birth in Spanish) transmuted by our own existence as our existence has been transmuted by it. This is what Mary shows us how to do. This process happens by the power of the Holy Spirit, who seeks to overshadow us as he did Mary as we attach ourselves to Christ by means of a spiritual umbilical cord that nourishes not him as the child growing within, but us as the spiritual mothers.
• One who lived this whole process of becoming impregnated with the word of God and being transmuted by it so that she might live it and pass the Word on to others was St. Bridget of Sweden, the saint whom we celebrate today. St. Bridget of Sweden (1304-1373) was married at the age of 14 in an arranged nuptials to Ulf Gudmarsson. She had eight children and was an exemplary wife and mother, doing the Lord’s will and passing on the faith to her husband and children faithfully: one of her children, Christina, also became a canonized saint. When Bridget was in her late 30s, she and her husband made a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, the shrine where the remains of St. James (whose feast day we’ll celebrate on Thursday) are interred. Returning from Santiago, Ulf and Bridget decided that God was calling them, now that their children were older, to go their separate ways as they continued the pilgrimage of life. Ulf entered a Cistercian monastery and Bridget founded a new religious community, the Order of the Most Holy Savior, which has ever after been called the Brigittines after her. There she was blessed with many mystical visions of the Lord’s passion, which bore great fruit in her own life as she united herself to the sufferings of the Lord for the salvation of the world. Calvary is the paradigm of all those who do not their own will but the Father’s and the more she pondered Jesus on the Cross, the more she sought to obey him, the more she followed his footsteps dry shod in the midst of the sea. In the opening prayer of the Mass, we turned to God “who guided Saint Bridget of Sweden along different paths of life” — as a daughter, a wife, a mom, a religious and a foundress — and asked him, “grant us that, walking worthily in our vocation, we may seek you in all things.” St. Bridget sought God in all the phases of her life, a life that was a continuous pilgrimage of faith, following Jesus in obeying the will of the Father and helping her family, her spiritual daughters, and the whole Church learn to do so.
• Today as we celebrate the Eucharist, we know that Jesus wants to make us every more his family, his kin, his mother and siblings, by strengthening all of us to receive his Word within like Mary and St. Bridget, to let that Word grow so that it takes on our flesh, to strengthen us to do the Father’s will together with him, and to pass on the faith by helping others to become his spiritual mother, brother and sister by doing the same. To strengthen us to do so, Jesus has us do this in his memory. As we receive his body and blood, with his humanity received from Mary, he helps us to imitate her in following him all the way.

The readings for today’s Mass were: