Tuesday 3rd week in ordinary time
"Mk 3:31-35"
A crowd was sitting about him; and they said to him, "Your mother and your brethren are outside, asking for you." And he replied, "Who are my mother and my brethren?" And looking around on those who sat about him, he said, "Here are my mother and my brethren! Whoever does the will of God is my brother, and sister, and mother."
Doing the Will of God. That's how Mary became the Mother of God: by accepting and doing God's Will - "Be it done unto me according to thy Word." If we want to be part of God's 'family' (brother, sister, mother...) that's all we have to do to take after Mary, our Mother and Jesus Himself in Gethsemane - "not my will, but thine, be done."
Holiness comes down to one thing: Doing God's Will. "Do you really want to be a saint?" wrote St JosemarÃa, "Carry out the little duty of each moment: do what you ought and concentrate on what you are doing." Some people think that holiness is about doing good things: praying, offering sacrifices, giving alms to the poor and saying the Rosary... But actually holiness is about doing the right thing at the right time. A saint is not the one who is praying all the time but the one who prays when it's time to pray, reads when it's time to read and eats when it's time to eat. A saint goes to bed when it's bedtime and gets up when it's time to wake up. A saint is, in this sense, 100% predictable. Saints are always doing what God wants them to do, whatever they should do at any time.
Any specific moment offers one right thing to do and an infinite number of wrong things to avoid. When it is time to study, studying is the right thing to do and all the rest is wrong. You might think that reading instead of studying is not 100% right but can be 50% right; at least, you can argue, 'it's better than being in my sister's room annoying her.' The truth is that studying is 100% right. Reading is 100% wrong. Annoying your sister would be 500% wrong. Do you understand? Those who do God's Will are doing the right thing at the right time. That is holiness. And that is why it is so difficult to do. Mary, my Mother, since holiness is for everyone, I believe that with your intercession and the help of God's grace, I can really achieve it!
