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Master·evangeli.net

Today's Gospel + short theological explanation

Tuesday of the Sixteenth Week in Ordinary Time
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Gospel text (Mt 12:46-50): While Jesus was speaking to the crowds... said, ""Whoever does the will of my heavenly Father is my brother, and sister, and mother.”

The will of the Father

EDITORIAL TEAM evangeli.net (based on texts by Benedict XVI) (Città del Vaticano, Vatican)

Today, Jesus Christ refers to those who do the will of the Heavenly Father as his own. But, this seems an exaggeration, even almost unnatural... The Drama played out at Gethsemane comes to mind; where Jesus human will was in certain conflict with his very own Devine will (he is after all God the Son and therefore is at one with the divine will).

The truth is that the mystery is not so much in the conflict of Christ’s Human and Divine will but our schizophrenia in distancing ourselves from the Father. Since its creation the Human will is oriented in the same direction as the Divine will. On doing what the divine will requires our human will become complete and not the opposite. But man as a result of the fall of original sin feels his freedom in danger because of the will of the father. It is this detachment which precisely caused great suffering to Jesus in the Garden of Olives.

—Jesus, our resistance to God was present in your prayers. With your bloody internal struggle in Gethsemane, you manage to drag our obstinate human nature to its true meaning and destiny: Our Father God.