"Behold, I come to do your will"

In today’s first reading, Heb. 10: 1-10, we read:  “First he [Jesus, Son of the Living God, the second person of the Blessed Trinity] says [to God the Father], Sacrifices and offerings, burnt offerings and sin offerings, you neither desired nor delighted in. These are offered according to the law. Then he [Jesus] says, Behold, I come to do your will. He takes away the first to establish the second. By this “will,”  we have been consecrated through the offering of the Body of Jesus Christ once for all.”

In the Gospel, Jesus, indirectly,in stating that those who do the will of His Father are his mother, his brothers and sisters, praises his mother and brothers who are outside the house where Jesus is looking for him.

What an awesome God! What great love!  You and I, and all of creation, are consecrated to God once and for all by the sacrifice of Jesus, who offers His life and pours out His blood on the cross for our salvation.  Through Jesus’ obedience to the Father even onto death, we are placed on a path that leads to reconciliation with our God. We are on a course that leads to holiness, to oneness with the Father and the Son through the gift of the Holy Spirit, the Love between the Father and the Son poured out upon us at the first Pentecost and all of the “Pentecosts” since that moment. God will allow nothing to throw us off course. His plan for our salvation will endure. “Heaven and earth will pass away but my word will not pass away” (Mk 13:31).

What a promise! I may stray, go off course, lose my way. Jesus doesn’t. He lives in me, having taken up His dwelling place in me when I was baptized and confirmed.  He continues to take up residence in me when I receive the Eucharist and “drink” at the Fountain of Living Waters, the Bible.  God is hidden in all of creation and in all of the events of my life and yours, the good and the bad, the beautiful and the ugly, the orderly and the chaotic.  His presence is veiled from the naked eye. Only through faith do we recognize God shining through the darkness of this world and making all things right with the Father.

Praise God!