Hey, You're Family

A good friend might say, Hey, I’m going to treat you like family!

We might say in return, Gee, I hope you’ll treat me better than that!

None of us has a perfect family.

But, like many, I’m blessed with a great family—both immediate and extended.

Unfortunately that’s not the case for everyone.

Our family can be our basic foundation of great love and loyalty and strength.

Or a hotbed of discontent, disappointment, rivalry and betrayal

Or a mix of many of those things.

Even those contradictory things.

Family relationships can be complex.

Some of us no longer have our families.

We may be the last surviving member of a family.

We may be distant or estranged from our family.

Families don’t always measure up to the ideal image the term conjures up.

The old lament is true (at least with our blood relatives).

You can pick your friends but you can’t pick your family.

And for some of us our friends are, in effect, our family.

We might feel more closely bound to a group of good friends than to our family.

We might even call that group our “family”.

But the deep bonds of our childhood family identity remain.

Even when family relationships are far less than ideal.

You can’t choose them, and you can’t lose them.

And that image of the ideal family also remains.

When someone tells us we’re like a brother or a sister—that we’re like family—

They’re referring to that ideal.

They’re giving us an extreme compliment. 

So what does Jesus mean with his words today?

Whoever does the will of my heavenly Father is my brother and sister and mother.

He’s certainly not belittling Mary or his other natural relatives.

He’s extending that extreme compliment to each of us.

Even more, he’s reminding us that we are indeed his family.

We’re all truly brothers and sisters to each other and to him.

We all have but one common Father—in heaven.

He’s saying he wants us to be as close to him as that ideal brother or sister or mother.

And he’s telling us how to reach that ideal—by doing the Father’s will.

He’s urging us to help deepen our intimate familial bond with him.

Tuesday of the 16th Week in Ordinary Time

Mt 12:46-50           Read this Scripture @usccb.org