In this gospel where the mother of Jesus and his relatives come and want to see Jesus to
talk to him, the crowd, of course, is thinking that our Lord's going to give them special
preference, and we can presume that Our Lady didn't want any special preference, and perhaps
she was requesting from our Lord in her heart that he not single her out or show her any,
put her in the limelight or anything. So our Lord probably
made this partially for that intention, that he didn't, that she wasn't singled out there,
but also the other relatives, because our Lord didn't want,
didn't want the people to think that he's going to give, going to treat his relatives in any
special way over everyone else when he is God over everyone, when he's the Messiah of everyone.
And he puts everyone on the same level here, saying, my mother and my brothers are those
who hear the word of God and act on it. Those who hear the word of God and act on it. Those who do
the will of, those who do the will of God are my mother, my brothers, my sisters, my relatives.
Those who do the will of God are close to me, are of my blood, so to speak. We are relatives of God.
When we do the will of God, and this is the thing to underline, doing the will of God is our life.
We're here. We are created.
We exist on this earth to do the will of God. Contrary to the philosophy of the world,
we, you live once, so eat, drink, and be merry, and you only live once, so be happy. Do your
own will. That's, that's what Satan holds out to us. Do your own will.
Have your life the way you want it. Do whatever you, whatever makes you happy.
And this is completely contrary to,
to the will of God, that we do his will. That's what he, you know, in, in, in eternal life,
we'll have things exactly the way we want and much more. But here we are to do the will. We
are to obey God and to serve him, to fulfill the mission that he has carried out, that he has
called us to do. What is our mission? We have to discern that, of course, through our talents and
abilities and our place and circumstances and our job, the things that,
that we are inclined to do, that are, is clear that God has put this inclination in our heart
to follow a certain vocation, to marriage, to religious life, to some job, some work,
some vocation. We are to do our responsibilities, fulfill our responsibilities because it is the
will of God. And to carry out every action, every decision that we make because it's the will of God,
because we want to please him. The will of God is our happiness. The will of God
is what is the very best thing for each one of us, the very best thing. So even if it's against our,
our own personal will, what our own inclinations, what we want to do, we must do the will of God
because it's what is best for us in this life and for eternal life. So we are to just, everything
depends on doing his will, discerning his will, fulfilling his will. And when we think of the
will of God, we think, need to think of two things, doing his will and accepting,
his will, doing his will, discerning his will, the commandments, obeying his commandments, his,
his counsels, his imitating the life of Jesus. He, listening to his word, heeding his word,
which as we read in the gospels and through the teachings of the church, also doing his will as
we are given it through our superiors, through those who are in authority over us to do his will,
God's will.
God's will through them as we discern it. And also in those difficult decisions that we need to make
and we discern through prayer, what is God's will? And I'll put aside my own will, my own likes,
put that aside and discern what is the best thing for me and the best thing for others who are
affected by what I do. What is the best thing? And that I discern. And we ask advice from
counsel, from wise men.
And then we make the best decision according to God's will, not our own inclinations and desires.
And that's always the thing too. The obstacle to doing God's will is our own will,
our own inclinations, desires, and pleasures. We have, we can't be attached to our own will,
our own pleasures, because then we will end up not doing God's will.
We end up committing sin because we're attached. And then we get all upset and unhappy,
when things don't go our way. When we can't get our will, it's impossible to get our own will,
and we get upset. But we have to understand that God's will is, God is always in control
of everything. Whatever happens to us is in some sense God's will, even the adversity and evil
things that happen to us, even the evil things that other people do to us. St. Alphonsus delineates
God's will.
In the sense of a material will of God and the moral will of men. So if somebody does something
evil and chooses to do evil and it affects me, they're committing sin. And God does not will
the moral aspect of a decision if it's against his will, against his commandments. If it's sinful,
he doesn't will that, but he wills the effect of it that comes upon us.
And in that way, we can accept everything. We accept everything that happens to us,
the good and the bad. Everything comes from God. Everything comes from God, the good and the bad,
and whatever. And we accept it. And when we do, we can be sure that God is going to assist us
with his grace. We need to accept his will, resign ourselves to the will of God, whatever happens to
us, whatever the weather is, hot or cold.
Whatever God has blessed us with or not blessed us with. I have a good memory of a, or I don't
have a good memory. I don't have good looks. I don't have intelligence. I don't have a
good hearing or sight. You know, all these things that we don't have control over are
God's will and we must accept it, resign ourselves to it, resign ourselves to our natural defects,
resign ourselves to accidents that happen to us. I spill something, I trip and fall, I
get in an accident, I make mistakes here and there that I couldn't control.
These things, too, are the little things. A fly flies around my head and lands in my nose and
people do things to me, little annoyances. People cough or people make noise or,
you know, things like that.
Things that happen, all these little things, these irritations, these are God's will. We need to
accept them. It's when we accept the little things that we can accept the big, difficult things that
God will present to us as well as his will. Everything that happens to us is, in a certain
sense, God's will in that sense and we need to accept it, resign ourselves to what God has placed
before us and ask for his grace.
His grace to carry the difficult crosses of our life and there are always going to be crosses and
that's God's will. God's will is that there are always crosses. St. Alphonsus gives the image of
us taking a rock and throwing it at a dog and the dog gets hit and is hurt and he goes to bite the
rock. But it wasn't the rock that threw it, it was the hand of the man.
And so, you know, whatever happens to us is from the hand of God. We have to see the finger of God,
the hand of God, his will in our life. Some person may have caused, may have made me do
something or hurt me in some way or good things may have happened to me. Everything comes from
the hand of God even if it's given to me by another person or by the weather or by circumstances in
my life.
God is the ultimate author of our, he's ultimately in control. We need to see his hand, see his hand
accepted and do his will. And we ask our lady who is the perfect observer of the will of God and
that's, this is the underlying teaching of this gospel today, that our lady was the one that
perfectly discerned his will, perfectly did his will and perfectly accepted his will in her life.
And that's why she is the greatest of all, all saints. And this is what makes, this is what will
make us saints. This is what determines our sanctification and holiness, our alignment to
the will of God, accepting his will as perfectly as we can. So let us strive to do that today and
ask our lady to, to help us.
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