TENTH SUNDAY OF THE YEAR - B

TENTH SUNDAY OF THE YEAR – B (Genesis 3:9-15; 2 Cor 4:13-5:1; Mark 3:20-25) Theme: We are the instruments of God’s will in and for the world Reflection: We are created to belong to his family - The last two weeks’ themes find their fulfilment in this week. We have been reflecting on the observance of the law is good. Even this observance has to give a way to the human dignity and human need. More than as an obligation we need to live the spirit of the law which calls for the integrity of mind and heart – coherence between intellect and affection. As today’s readings make it clear, Jesus summarizes the discourse on the observance of the law and says that one needs to do the will of God. Only when we do act according to the will of God we become his family. - In fact, God has created us not to be here on earth and away from him. He has created human beings to be with him. It was his desire when he formed man in his image and likeness: he breathed into man his life so that the man is always with him. Man’s dignity of being created in his image and likeness reveal that God called man to be in his family of Godhead. Whole of his creation has its culmination in the creation of man and woman. They are the crown of creation. They are placed as the owners and head of all the living creatures. They are given the dominance over all that is created. This is God’s will for man: man enjoys being with him and man always remain in his family. - However, as the Bible reveals to us, man has rejected to be a member of God’s family. He neglected his status of being his handiwork. He wanted to create his own family. He wanted to live separately and divided from him. He tried for the individual family. For this he has used his intelligence: to be more than God. He was so confident that he could live without or apart from his Creator. This is the arrogance of man: he wilfully and consciously rejected God’s will. Man is now found himself away from God’s family. Man is now ready to create his own world and his own family in which God has no place and His will find no priority. Thus, already in the beginning itself, God’s desire was shattered by man. - Attitude and behaviour of man with regards to God his Creator is manifested in his conscious disobedience and in his fall into the trap of the devil. As the consequence he has to face a shameful throw. He has been thrown away from the beautiful house, Garden of Eden. He has been placed outside of his family. He has been removed from the grace of God’s presence. Finally, he entered into the world. He has become a mixed being: a being with the double standards and a being with the double-mindedness. He has something of goodness in his human nature because he is created well by God. He has also something of evil tendencies in his human nature because he opted to choose what is placed before him by the Satan. - He is a being who is always in a constant struggle with himself. There is always this fight within him. He is in battle between what God wants from him and what he wants to do in his freedom. Whom to choose? is the biggest question in his life. Though he feels himself to be autonomous and eternally free being, he also feels from the other side that he cannot live all by himself. He is not only rational being but also relational being. He belongs to the family, to the society, to the world and also to God. He knows that he needs others and he needs God. But with is scientific adventures and technological growth he pretends to be the only master of the world. He pretends as though he never needed God for anything. Even in his helpless situations he prefers to lose his life rather than to return to God. In this way, he permanently goes away from the house of God and he keeps himself detached from the family of God. - He forgets his origin: man is not of his own creation. He is created by God. He is created to be in the family of God. This is, in reality, his identity as the human being created to be higher than any other creature. When he moves away from this bond of familiarity with God, he loses his dignity. He forgets his origin. He buys his own destruction. He soon realizes that the consequence of his coming of his family is the death. Very often man tries to give more importance to the mind and intellect, rather than to the heart and love: they are the fountain of family life. - “Adam! Where are you?” (First reading): God knows that man willed to stay away from him. He knows that man by this attitude has bought for himself a loss of life. He knows that man has also a nature that is basically good and that it is only controlled by the evil spirit. He knows that man desires to come back and in fact, many times he tries enough to get away from the family of devil, to enter into his family. He also knows that man has become spiritually so incapable that he cannot by himself come out this situation. Knowing all these, God himself has taken a first step. He comes out to meet man. He comes out to call man. Indeed, he searches for man. He cries out to man: where are you? (Gen 3:9). This inquiry of God about man is not finished with this question to Adam. We are Adams. We have many times tried to stay away from God. God does not wish that we are away and we are perished. He invites man to come back. He encourages man to return to the Garden of Eden. For this, God himself has opened a way for man: the way of God is Jesus Christ. He has come to call man to do the will of God so that they belong to God’s family. Readings: The requirement to belong to the family of God – to do His Will - “My food is to do the will of my Father”: This is the affirmation of Jesus. He has come not to do what he wills but what his Father wants from him. He always proclaims his identity as the one who does the will of His Father. He often declares that he has come to fulfil the will of God, his Father, and he invites all to do the same. This accomplishment of Gods’ will is that which confers to us that familiarity which makes our relation with Him something intimate and confidant. We have his invitation in today’s Gospel: “Who is my mother and who are my brothers? Turning to those who were with him he said: here is my mother and here are my brothers! Because the one who fulfils the will of God, is my brother, sister and mother” (Mark 3:33-35). Jesus always considers that he has nothing else to do expect carrying on the mission designed by his Father. The fulfilling of the will of God is something very constant in the whole life of Jesus. He has even taught us, as to his disciples, the prayer of “Our Father” in which he proclaims: “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”. Garden of Gethsemane is the garden in which Jesus utterly commits himself to his Father and thus manifests his perfect obedience. In this way, in the garden of Gethsemane Jesus gives to the Father what the first man failed to give in the Garden of Eden: the desire to be with him always. In this Gethsemane, in the time of agony and pain, Jesus prefers to do the mission for which has come: “Not my will, Father, but yours be done”. These are the examples of his life to show that he is not for himself even for a single moment. His identification is his mission. His mission is to fulfil his Father’s will and desire. - Two separate situations – those who are inside and those who are outside: the Gospel presents to us two situations. Already some are with Jesus inside the house. They came to him to see him, to listen to him and to be with him. They belong to him. They belong to his family. They belong to the one family of God. There are few who have come and stayed outside only to observe what he is about to do. They are only curious and concerned of what he is going to do. They are only there to plot and to put him to test. They did not really come to be with him. They have come only to find fault with him. They refused to enter in to stay with him. Thus, few are inside, with him and for him; few are outside, away from him in mind and in heart. When his family members and his relatives have come to see him Jesus provokes a new mode of being in relation to him. He did not reject his mother and he did not try to humiliate her in the public as many speak. He, in reality, elevates them. He takes the context and proclaims the requirement to belong to God’s family. - His family belongs to him: when Jesus questions the crowd who is his mother and brothers, it is not that he pretends as though not knowing them. He knows them. He knows who his mother is and who his brothers are. They are part of his life. They are part of his journey of the mission. They are part of his intimate relationship. The question here is not his relationship with them. Jesus wants to reveal the truth about God’s family taking this context as an occasion. Mary and his brothers are already his family. They already follow him. They are already on the way to do what he is doing. Therefore, through their arrival to see him and through the question raised to the people about them, Jesus clearly indicates that they are with him always. Jesus takes the ordinary situation in order to reveal the extraordinary truth: His real family is those who do the will of God. - New mode of relating: Jesus, through the passage of the Gospel, opens the space for the new mode of relating to God. He makes us participate in his intimacy with God and with us. In front of him nothing is indifferent. Jesus speaks of God in the radically different mode and introduces a new concept of familiar relation with Him. His teaching of God, as our Father and himself as our Brother, is something new to his audience. For some people it is hard to digest calling God as the Father. Many think that God should be someone who is beyond our comprehension. Many feel that God should be a totally different and powerful being who controls us. At the situation of this kind, Jesus brings about a new kind of relationship: Father and Children. We all of us, along with Jesus, make one family. He himself calls God as his Father and asks us to do the same: “Our Father who is in heaven”. Everyone is invited into this intimate rapport between God and us. It is for establishing this “family of God” that Jesus made all of us equally saved and shared by his mission: by his cross he broke down all the barriers of difference and indifferences and by his resurrection he opened a the door of this new family of God. Conclusion: We have to be instruments to build up family of God in the world - Mutual respect and embrace: something that is essential in the family or any kind of relationship is mutual giving and receiving. Jesus gives us golden rule: “Do unto others what you want them to do for you” (Math 7:12). Relationship grows only in this exchange of virtues. We give and therefore we receive. We receive therefore we give. Life is a mutual exchange of respect. We have to embrace everyone with equal dignity of being our brothers and sisters. Jesus never calls us slaves, instead, calls us brothers. Indeed, we are his brothers and we have to behave in the same worthy manner. This is what we have to learn. We should work for the society of mutual respect and uplifting. We should be the pioneers of such society in which prevail only justice, equality and fraternity. If we accept Jesus as our Brother and if we really want to be with him, in his family, we need to do as he has done. By love and forgiveness he embraced all. Let us try all that we could in order to arrive at this level of the vocation of faith. - We may be “out of mind” for the world, still we need to be Jesus’ instruments: In the Gospel we find the people who considered Jesus as “out of mind” (Mark 3:21). The teaching of Jesus often created incomprehension and confusion in the listeners. When he talks people get divided: few understand and follow him and thus become his family and others cannot digest what he talks and thus become his opponents. Jesus does not mind all these things. He has come to proclaim the truth, to show the way and to give the life: “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life”. He fulfils this at any cost, at the cost of incomprehension as the consequence of which people say that he is out of min. He fulfils this even at the cost of his life which he has done on the cross. - Many a time, we also come across same kind of situation. When we live our faith and preach the gospel, people may say that we are out of mind and out of the world. This has happened to Jesus and would it not happen to you? Jesus himself already reminds: “they will persecute you for my sake… if you sustain it till the end… the rewards will be great in heaven” (Math 5:10-12). We need not fear about this. We have to continue to do the will of God until the last breath of our life. This is what Jesus wants from us. Only this way he wants us to enter into the family of God. Only this way he wants us to be the instruments of establishing a family of God in the world. - Our confidence is Jesus himself: It is not so easy first of all to know what God wills for us and all the more to fulfil it with our testimony of the words and actions. It is furthermore difficult when the world hates us, laughs at us and creates lot of tribulations and sufferings. We have a foundation for our faith and vocation: Jesus who has undergone all these before us and for us (second reading). We should not be discouraged of all these situations because we have an eternal place (second reading – 2 Cor 5:1). Our joy is this that we belong to him: Our family is God’s, we are with him and we will be with him forever. Thus, with courage and confidence we have to serve as the instrument of creating God’s family in this world.