Homily For Tuesday Third Week in Ordinary Time Year A, 24tn January, 2023. The Memorial of St. Francis de Sales

Readings: Heb. 10:1-10; Ps. 40; Mark 3:31-35

Rev. Fr. Emmanuel Emenike Onyia.

 

WHERE DO YOU ULTIMATELY AND TRULY BELONG?

 

To have the feeling for a sense of belonging is fundamental to human happiness and well-being, for it gives value to our life and helps us in coping with some painful emotions. Hence, we often want to belong with one another, to our friends and families, to our culture or from one association to another. However, one of the common and safest place to belong is our families, especially when it is rooted in the love of God and neighbour.

 

So, today in our Gospel passage, Jesus speaks about belonging to his family and his relationship with members of his family when he said: ‘Here are my mother and my brothers. Anyone who does the will of my Father in heaven, he is my brother and sister and mother.’ From this Gospel, Jesus speaks of two ways the people around him could be identified as members of his family. Firstly he talks about those who belong to the family of his birth that is, his mother, father and relations. Then his other family which is made up of those who do the will of God.

 

 This family he says, is his true family where doing the will of God is the only way of belonging to this family. This is not to say that Jesus is rejecting his family; to do so would be contradicting his own teaching about loving ones parents and loving ones neighbours. However, Jesus is using this opportunity to emphasize that relationship with God is more important and this should depends on our total commitment to doing the will of God through him. Surprisingly, Mary the mother of Jesus belongs to both sides of the family, for she gave birth to Jesus and also the first to do the will of God when she  said, “let it be done unto me according to your word” (Luke 1:38). For this reason she is the first disciple of Jesus and a model for all Christians.

 

Thus, to be a Christian or a disciple is to enter into the family of Jesus and embrace a new relationship with God and with one another for this is the most important place to belong. All other bonds, including those of blood should be considered secondary. Because, belonging to God is fundamental to our basic relationships, prior to all human relations. Since we belong first to God before belonging to our families, after which we all go back to God where we ultimately belongs, which is determined by how we have been doing God’s will here on earth.

 

Little wonder we heard in our first reading today the need to do the will of God not just follow the laws that will not bring us to God. For the reading says: 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, for the Lord 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.

 

Dear friends, where do we ultimately and truly belong? As Christians, we claimed to belong to God, do our attitudes and decisions show that we truly belong to God? Do we not often commit ourselves to things contrary to the faith we professed in God? Today we celebrate the memorial of St.  Francis  de Sales, a man who truly understood what it means to belong to the true family of Jesus.

 

Though, St. Francis was born in a noble family, but his encounters with the Lord and some questions about the faith eventually led him to seek the Lord more closely through discernment. He later gave up his rights and inheritance after his encounter with the Lord and became a priest and later a bishop. He dedicated a lot of time for the people. He tirelessly involved himself in reaching out to many Christians, including those who have separated themselves from the Church. Today,  we are called to imitate him in life a life that shows what we truly and ultimately belong to God.

 

LET US PRAY: Lord God, today we are called to do your will always in order to truly belong to that true family of Jesus where love of you and of our neighbour unites us together. Grant that through the intercessions of St.  Francis de Sales, we may learn to do your will and be a good collaborators with others in the mission and vocation entrusted to us. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Do have a blessed day.