From: Mark 3:31-35

The True Kinsmen of Jesus

[31] And His (Jesus’) mother and His brethren came; and standing outside they
went to Him and called Him. [32] And a crowd was sitting about Him: and they
said to Him, “Your mother and Your brethren are outside, asking for You.” [33]
And He replied, “Who are My mother and My brethren?” [34] And looking around
on those who sat about Him, He said, “Here are My mother and My brethren!
[35] Whoever does the will of God is My brother, and sister, and mother.”

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Commentary:

31-35. In Aramaic, the language used by the Jews, the word “brethren” is a broad
term indicating kinship: nephews, first cousins, and relatives in general are called
‘brethren’ (for further explanation cf. note on Mark 6:1-3). “Jesus did not say this
to disown His mother, but to show that she is worthy of honor not only account of
having given birth to Jesus, but also because she has all the virtues” (Theophylact,
“Enarratio In Evangelium Marci, in loc.”).

Therefore, the Church reminds us that the Blessed Virgin “in the course of her
Son’s preaching received the words whereby, in extolling a kingdom beyond the
concerns and ties of flesh and blood, He declared blessed those who heard and
kept the word of God as she was faithfully doing” (Vatican II, “Lumen Gentium”,
58).

Our Lord, then, is also telling us that if we follow Him we will share His life more
intimately than if we were a member of His family. St.Thomas explains this by
saying that Christ “had an eternal generation and a generation in time, and gave
preference to the former. Those who do the will of the Father reach Him by Hea-
venly generation [...]. Everyone who does the will of the Father, that is to say,
who obeys Him, is a brother or sister of Christ, because he is like Him who ful-
filled the will of His Father. But he who not only obeys but converts others, be-
gets Christ in them, and thus becomes like the Mother of Christ” (”Commentary
on St. Matthew”, 12, 49-50.)

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Source: “The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries”. Biblical text from the
Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries by members of
the Faculty of Theology, University of Navarre, Spain.

Published by Four Courts Press, Kill Lane, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, Ireland, and
by Scepter Publishers in the United States.

Readings at Mass

First reading

Hebrews 10:1-10 ©

Since the Law has no more than a reflection of these realities, and no finished picture of them, it is quite incapable of bringing the worshippers to perfection, with the same sacrifices repeatedly offered year after year. Otherwise, the offering of them would have stopped, because the worshippers, when they had been purified once, would have no awareness of sins. Instead of that, the sins are recalled year after year in the sacrifices. Bulls’ blood and goats’ blood are useless for taking away sins, and this is what he said, on coming into the world:

You who wanted no sacrifice or oblation,

prepared a body for me.

You took no pleasure in holocausts or sacrifices for sin;

then I said,

just as I was commanded in the scroll of the book,

‘God, here I am! I am coming to obey your will.’

Notice that he says first: You did not want what the Law lays down as the things to be offered, that is: the sacrifices, the oblations, the holocausts and the sacrifices for sin, and you took no pleasure in them; and then he says: Here I am! I am coming to obey your will. He is abolishing the first sort to replace it with the second. And this will was for us to be made holy by the offering of his body made once and for all by Jesus Christ.

Psalm

Psalm 39:2,4,7-8,10,11 ©