Tuesday, July 19, 2016
16th Week in Ordinary Time
1st Reading:
Mi 7: 14-15. 18-20
Gospel: Matthew 12:46-50
While Jesus was still talking to the people, his mother and his brothers wanted to speak to him and they waited outside. So someone said to him, “Your mother and your brothers are just outside; they want to speak with you.”
Jesus answered, “Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?” Then he pointed to his disciples and said, “Look! Here are my mother and my brothers. Whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is for me brother, sister, or mother.”
D@iGITAL-EXPERIENCE
(Daily Gospel in the Assimilated Life Experience)
When someone called Jesus’ attention about his mother who was looking for him, Jesus asked, “Who is my mother?” To a Filipino like us the question sounds disrespectful. But one cannot conclude that Jesus, in asking this question, intended to disown his mother without courting absurdity. He couldn’t have learned to be that rude, not to the woman under whose watch he grew up in wisdom and age.
“Who is my mother?” It was Jesus who asked the question, it was him who gave the answer. He said, “Whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is for me, mother”. In effect he revealed Mary’s true greatness. Her greatness was not only in her biological relationship with him but also in her special relationship with the Trinity. When she said “Yes” at the Annunciation she became the spouse of the Holy Spirit, and consequently the mother of the Son of God. No mortal creature has come this close to the life of the Trinity. “Yes” is just a three-letter word but it brought her three times closer to God. She was daughter of the Father by order of creation, Spouse of the Holy Spirit by order of the Annunciation, and Mother of the Son of God by order of the incarnation.
The implications of that Yes were scary but she embraced them all as they came. This way she became Jesus’ partner in saving the world. With Jesus’ submission to the Father’s Will during his Agony at the Garden of Gethsemane, and with Mary’s “be it done unto me according you your Word” at the Annunciation, both worked together to save the world. Efforts to proclaim her as co-redemptrix have been stalled by theological squabbles. Some camps are afraid that the title might give Mary more honor than she deserves. But history insists that Mary had been God’s co-worker in the salvific act. Jesus himself was generous in giving her honor. For when he asked, “Who is my mother?” and when he answered his own question with “Whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is for me, mother”, Jesus gave Mary the highest form of affirmation God can give to a creature. – (Atty.) Rev. Fr. Dan Domingo P. delos Angeles, Jr., DM., REB. Email: dan.delosangeles@gmail.com.
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