The Gospel for Tuesday of the 25th week in Ordinary Time is taken from St. Luke 8, chapter 19 to the 21st verse. The mother of Jesus and his brothers came to him but were unable to join him because of the crowd. He was told, your mother and your brothers are standing outside and they wish to see you. He said to them in reply, my mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and act on it. Jesus came to reveal to us the relationship that is possible between ourselves and God the Father.

And what we see in this story is a clarity of what it is that Jesus intention is. He wants to make a new relationship between God and his people as intimate and as close as mother, father, son, brother. He makes it clear that he’s come to call us to a new family, a family of faith, a family called the Church. Please ponder these thoughts and I will close with a prayer. Foreign closing prayer. Father, your call to have an intimate relationship with you is something we didn’t expect.

Help us to understand it more fully so that we can know the intimacy that you long to have with us. You dwelling within us, making us one with you in a way we could never have imagined. And we ask this in Jesus name, Amen.