Today's reading comes from Mark 3:20-35. Then Jesus went home and the crowd came together again so that they could not even eat. And when his friends heard it, they went out to seize him, for they said, "He is beside himself." And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem said, "He is possessed by Beelzebub. And by the prince of demons, he casts out the demons." And he called them to him and said to them in parables, "How can Satan cast out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, the kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand but is coming to an end. But no one can enter a strong man's house and plunder his goods unless he first binds the strongman. Then indeed, he may plunder his house. Truly I say to you, all sin will be forgiven the sons of men and whatever blasphemies they utter. But whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness but is guilty of an eternal sin." For they had said, "He has an unclean spirit."

And his mother and his brethren came and standing outside, they sent to him and called him. And a crowd was sitting about him and they said to him, '"Your mother and your brothers are outside asking for you." And he replied, "Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?" And looking around on those who sat about him, he said, "Here are my mothers and my brethren. Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother." There's a lot to jump into here. What word or phrase or idea jumped out at you? The first thing that jumped out at me is a history lesson here. Walter was studying history, loves history. And he asked me a question a few weeks ago, "Why there's the rise of this country, and that country, and this kingdom, and that kingdom, and the ones that are around 1,000 years ago aren't around anymore, and the ones that are around 3,000 years ago aren't around anymore, and it keeps going on and changing." And really, the answer is here in this reading. A kingdom that is divided against itself cannot stand. And that's what happens throughout history. Kingdoms become divided against themselves. Countries become divided against themselves. And so that struck me as interesting there. But then the last line is what really hit me. Whoever does the will of God is my brother, my sister, my mother. He wasn't disrespecting his mother. We know that. He wasn't disrespecting his cousins, his brethren. We know that. But he was saying there's primacy and primacy around doing the will of God. And it's primacy over what? Well, primacy over our own will, primacy over our own self-interest, primacy over our own personal preferences, privacy over what we feel like doing, and inviting us to give the will of God that kind of primacy in our lives.

I think very often we ask ourselves, what do we want to do? Very often, a lot of other people ask us, what do you want? Or what do you want to do? And it's a good question, but it's the wrong question. And the question is, what does God want? What does God want you to do? And I think throughout my life, there have been many times where I have pretended not to know things that I knew. And in those cases, what I knew was what God was calling me to. I knew what God was calling me to in many, many, many cases. And I was pretending not to know. And so my challenge to you today is to explore that in the quest to do the will of God as we're being invited to in the Scriptures is to explore the question, what do you know that you are pretending not to know? What do you know about what God is asking of you or calling you to that you're pretending not to know? Have a great day. Remember, be bold, be Catholic.