Homily for the Third Tuesday of Ordinary Time

Today is the memorial of St. Angela Merici, foundress of what would eventually become the Ursuline order. The Ursulines have done tremendous work in education, and for women in particular. The Ursuline school in New Orleans is the oldest continuously operating Catholic school in the US, and the oldest girl’s school as well.

Israel was formed as a nation of law before it was a nation of land. The tribes gathered on Sinai entered into a covenant with the Lord, and it was through this relationship in law that made them the people of God. Observe my commandments, do these things, live this way. You will be my people and I will be your God. Much of the law speaks to community life and the relationships between people which must be ordered rightly to God.

The Gospel invites us to look at another, more intimate community: the family. Jesus seems, at first glance, to be brushing the family aside. His kin are outside asking for him, and his response is to gesture at those gathered with Him at the table. Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother. Far from diminishing the family into some sort of abstract “brotherhood of man,” our Lord is instead showing us that our ties to one another are not merely from a shared set of obligations to the law, but are fundamentally the ties of family. And if our lives are rightly ordered to God, the ties that bind us are the bonds of a family. Our Lord was pretty clear about this. He didn’t say ‘is like a brother and sister’ or suggest this as symbolic.

“Here are my mother and my brothers.”

When we live as a family of God, our lives should become inexplicable to outsiders. We will do and say things that make no sense, and live in a way that seems out-of-joint with the world. If we see a man pulled by a water-skiing boat, our mind comprehends what’s going on. If we see a man on skis zipping along without help across the water, it’s going to get our attention. We will want to look closer, to know more, and to find out what’s going on.

So much, also, for a life of faith. St. Angela started catechetical groups organized at parishes and ended up founding an order whose work continues five hundred years later. Our own ripples may not be as evident, but they will certainly last as long.

St. Angela Merici, pray for us.