The mother of Jesus and his brothers arrived at the house. Standing outside, they sent word to Jesus and called him. A crowd seated around him told him, “Your mother and your brothers and your sisters are outside asking for you.” But he said to them in reply, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” And looking around at those seated in the circle he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”
The Gospel of the Lord.
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Perhaps the two most influential thinkers in the history of the Catholic Church are Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas, who lived 800 years apart.
Saint Augustine lived in northern Africa in the 4th century and is most famous for his memoir, Confessions, in which he documents his storied past, his dramatic conversion, and ultimately his conclusion that:
“Our hearts are restless until they rest in you, O Lord.”
The Church has preserved these, and over five million other words either written or preached by Augustine, for nearly two-thousand years.
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Similarly, Saint Thomas Aquinas, whose feast day we celebrate today, was a prolific writer who built upon the writings of Augustine. Incredibly, Thomas wrote more than 100,000 pages of philosophy and theology. His depth and clarity of thought remain unmatched.
Yet, one day while celebrating Mass, Thomas received a vision of heaven that affected him so deeply he never wrote another word.
“The end of my labors has come,” he said. “All that I have written appears to be as so much straw after the things that have been revealed to me.”
Three months later, Thomas died peacefully.
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So, what can the life and example of these towering Saints say to us today?
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First, make every effort to be counted as a brother or sister of Jesus Christ, as the Lord calls for in today’s Gospel. You will remain restless – unsatisfied in life – until you do.
Secondly, remember that there is no sacrifice we can make that outweighs the reward to come. Even the compendium of Thomas Aquinas – 100,000 pages of the best writing the Church has ever known – is, in his words, straw compared to the beauty of God.
So, how might I grow with the Lord today?
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Image credits: (1) Pantocrator, Sinai (2) Augustine versus Aquinas, The Gospel Coalition (3) Sunday Social
The scribes who had come from Jerusalem said of Jesus, “He is possessed by Beelzebul,” and “By the prince of demons he drives out demons.”
Summoning them, he began to speak to them in parables, “How can Satan drive out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand; that is the end of him. But no one can enter a strong man’s house to plunder his property unless he first ties up the strong man. Then he can plunder his house. Amen, I say to you, all sins and all blasphemies that people utter will be forgiven them. But whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an everlasting sin.” For they had said, “He has an unclean spirit.”
The Gospel of the Lord.
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There’s very good news and very bad news in today’s Gospel passage.
Jesus tells us plainly, “All sins and all blasphemies that people utter will be forgiven them.” That’s the good news.
There’s nothing that can separate us from the love of Jesus Christ or from eventually entering into his kingdom.
With one exception.
“Whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never have forgiveness,” he says, “but is guilty of an everlasting sin.”
It’s imperative that we’re clear on what this sin is.
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One of the primary roles of the Holy Spirit is to forgive sins; to purify or sanctify our souls. We receive our first dose of that divine forgiveness in baptism when the stain of Original Sin is washed away.
We then seek that same divine forgiveness later in life, particularly in confession.
But if a person deadens their conscience to the point that they no longer know the difference between right and wrong, then they cannot be sorry – and therefore, they cannot repent.
That would be the unforgivable sin against the Holy Spirit, believing that you are, in fact, not in need of forgiveness.
Jesus is not declaring that the scribes have committed this everlasting sin. However, he is warning them of the grave peril they are in, unless they open their hearts to the Holy Spirit and repent.
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Consider it another way.
If you live in darkness long enough, then you lose the ability to see.
If you remain in bed long enough, then you lose the ability to walk.
If you stop using a particular language, then you lose the ability to converse.
And if you stop recognizing the difference between right and wrong, then you lose the ability to recognize your own sins, and therefore you cannot repent.
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“Whoever has ears ought to hear,” Jesus says. “All sins will be forgiven,” so long as we remain humble enough to recognize that He is Lord and we are not.
For all the times we’ve fallen short, we should repent and rejoice knowing God loves us and forgives us, if only we ask.
And while we are at it, we should forgive others as Christ has forgiven us. 
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Image credits: (1) David Jeremiah Blog (2) The Kingdom @ Glandore Underdale (3) Catholic to the Max
Since many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the events that have been fulfilled among us, just as those who were eyewitnesses from the beginning and ministers of the word have handed them down to us, I too have decided, after investigating everything accurately anew, to write it down in an orderly sequence for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may realize the certainty of the teachings you have received.
Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news of him spread throughout the whole region. He taught in their synagogues and was praised by all.
He came to Nazareth, where he had grown up, and went according to his custom into the synagogue on the sabbath day. He stood up to read and was handed a scroll of the prophet Isaiah. He unrolled the scroll and found the passage where it was written: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord. Rolling up the scroll, he handed it back to the attendant and sat down, and the eyes of all in the synagogue looked intently at him. He said to them, “Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.”
The Gospel of the Lord.
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Saint Luke was a physician. Anyone who’s a doctor understands a special part of Luke’s heart and history.
They understand the pressure he felt – how much people depended upon him, as well as the joy he’d experience from saving a life one day, or the sorrow of losing a life the next.
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We who are baptized can share a deeper dimension of Luke’s heart by empathizing with Luke the believer, the disciple, the physician of souls. His love for medicine was transformed by his passion for the Good News of Jesus Christ.
Jesus taught Luke that, no matter how bleak life may seem, it can never be lost again. Even in the face of death, the resurrection dawns.
While Luke may have continued practicing medicine after Pentecost, we can be sure that part of his “in-take” was asking each patient if he or she had heard the Good News and was baptized.
His desire to heal people never changed; it deepened. Instead of just recommending herbs, spices, or hot compresses, Luke would also quote the words of the Lord while ministering to the sick and suffering:
“Do not be afraid. I have overcome the world.”
“Why are you weeping?”
“Rise and sin no more.”
Luke’s medicine became Gospel medicine, often applied through the power of words. Beneath those words was the Person of Jesus Christ, who did the deeper healing.
This is how the ministry of our Lord continues to this day, through the power of speech. Whenever we speak the words of scripture, Christ comes to life. For example, it’s Christ who says through the priest:
“This is my Body… This is my Blood.”
“I baptize you.”
“I absolve you.”
Not me, but him.
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Jesus inaugurates his public ministry the same way in Luke’s Gospel, using the power of speech.
Immediately after being baptized by John in the Jordan, the Spirit drives the Lord into the desert, where he’s tempted by Satan for forty days and forty nights.
After overcoming each of these initial temptations, the Lord is ready to begin his ministry. So, he returns home to the synagogue in Nazareth, where he studied the scriptures as a boy.
Asking the attendant to hand him the scroll of the prophet Isaiah, Jesus unrolls it and locates the passage where Isaiah foresaw a Jubilee Year, an appointed time when:
Debts would be forgiven; captives would be set free; the blind would see; and the lame would walk.
Then Jesus makes a bombshell announcement. Speaking publicly for the first time in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus says, “TODAYthis scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.”
With one word, an 800-year-old prophecy comes to life. Everything Isaiah foresees, Christ will do in his ministry, revealing his identity as the Messiah.
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Ironically, Christ’s listeners take offense at the idea that the anticipation is over; that God’s Word is fulfilled in their hearing; that the scriptures have come to life in their presence.
They are not offended by the well-worn words of hope from Isaiah. They’re upset by the idea that the time for healing and repentance is now.
And God’s appointed servant sent to inaugurate this age of peace and reconciliation is Jesus, the familiar, bone-and-flesh son of Mary and Joseph, a nobody carpenter from Nazareth.
How could it be, they wonder, that in the Old Testament no one could see the face of God and live…yet, somehow, this man claims to be filled with God’s Spirit! How can Jesus be the Messiah, the Son of God?
To the locals who know him well, it sounds preposterous. But the rejection Jesus experiences in the synagogue is a small taste of the larger rejection to come.
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Like the locals from Nazareth, how often are we reluctant to embrace the idea of Jesus coming to us through his Word, the Sacraments, or a friend, saying to us what he said to them, “today”?
We all want to be healed, to grow in faith and holiness, to leave poor or destructive habits behind, and to follow the path of love, but somehow real change often sounds better tomorrow than it does today.
Yet the Psalmist proclaims, “If today you hear his voice, harden not your heart.”
What might the Lord be saying to us? Is God inviting us to leave something behind? To try something new? To take a leap of faith? Or to change in some way?
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Saint Luke uses one word to set the Lord’s ministry in motion: today.
It might be the same word God is saying to us:
Do whatever he tells you.
Not tomorrow.
Today.
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Image credits: (1) The Fight of Faith (2) FreePik (3) Prodos Games
