Tuesday January 23
If indeed Jesus’ family thought he was mad (see January 24), then they belonged to those who “stood outside.” Belonging to the same family or race as Jesus does not make one a disciple (see Mt 3:9). Not that, but doing the will of God. This was the passion of his life; anyone who was not part of that was not part of him. In the agony of Gethsemane he was able to say, “Not my will but yours be done.” In him the passion to do the Father’s will was deeper than death; it is not surprising then that it should also be deeper than birth and natural life.
How many things are deeper than birth and death? Or more practically, how many things are deeper in me than birth and death? Or still more practically, what would I live and die for? “Nothing to live or die for,” sang John Lennon, imagining an ideal world. But when the great Vincent McNabb was asked in Hyde Park, London, what he would do if he was faced with martyrdom, he replied, “I’d probably deny the Faith immediately!” It expressed the humility of a man who knew that in the real world everything is grace when it comes to the crunch. “Nothing to live and die for” is not a description of an ideal world but precisely the opposite: a world without an ideal. Better to be a failure (under grace) in the real world than to imagine one where it is impossible to fail because there is nothing at which to succeed.
