- First Reading: Prov 21:1–6, 10–13
- Responsorial Psalm: Ps 119:1, 27, 30, 34, 35, 44
- Gospel: Luke 8:19–21
People often struggle with the way the Lord talks about family, because he seems to distance himself even from the concept of it.
But over the years, I have noticed something unusual. The people who complain the most about these sayings often have the most difficult relationships with their own families. They object to the Lord saying these things, but then they are always fighting with their relatives. They are distant from some of them and no longer speak to others.
I think the words Jesus speaks to us about family are meant to bring healing. He is telling us that in the kingdom of God, even this reality that so many of us struggle with throughout our lives can be healed and made into something greater.
Our human families have human faults. There is sin in our families. There are struggles in those relationships, and they can become broken. But in the kingdom of God, family can be made perfect. Through hearing the word of God and acting on it, we can create family—true family. And I think he means that in the deepest sense of the word: family that is perfect and perfectly united in God himself.
Even this reality that we are all born into, with all its brokenness, can be healed and made into something greater. And all it requires of us is to hear the word of God and act on it, to seek holiness, to seek the kingdom of God. These are the things that can create even a perfect family.
So when Jesus speaks this way, I don’t think he is putting down the families into which we are born. I think we should see in his words the healing, the re-creation, that he offers to everything else. We get new bodies. We get a new earth. All these things are made new in Christ, and so are our very relationships.
The things we have experienced as broken in this world are also recreated in Christ himself and made into something greater than we could ever have experienced here. That should bring us comfort in the midst of our struggles with family, with friends, and with others. Christ intends to heal those relationships as well. He intends to make them new and give them back to the Father as something greater than they were.
And so let us strive all the more to live out the Gospel, to hear God’s word and act on it, and to draw ever closer to that kingdom where all things are made new, where all things are made perfect, and everything is united in God himself.