When His family arrives and Jesus is notified; instead of bringing them up front, He uses this as an important teaching moment.  He raises all His true disciples to a higher place and our Lord indicates that we share the deep bond of intimacy with His own family as we seek to do the Will of God.  Being a Disciple of Jesus, in other words a Christian, means having a deep, growing and personal relationship of love and unity with the Blessed Trinity.  Just like we know Mary did.

“Blessed are those who heard and kept the Word of God as Mary faithfully did”.

Jesus shows us that true kinship, true family is not just a matter of flesh and blood.  God’s gracious gift to us is His adoption of us as His sons and daughters.  This is something that we celebrate in many places of our faith, but none more distinctly than at the baptismal font.

When we are claimed for Christ at the font, we enter into this adoptive configuration with Jesus and the Church.  Everything we do for Christ, answering our vocational call, giving witness to our faith everywhere we go, living by the spiritual and corporal works of mercy, loving all with the greatest love…all these things we do as our relationship grows with God.  To lay down one’s life for our friends; to sacrifice and surrender ourselves in every way.

We consider this too today as we celebrate the feast of St. Andrew Kim and his companions; over 100 Korean Christians who made the ultimate sacrifice in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.  The story of these brave martyrs should touch all of our lives.  St. Andrew was a young priest who was ordained only about a year, but died bravely professing Christ and evangelizing to the very end of his life when he was being tortured and was beheaded.  He was baptized at 15 and was nine years later ordained a priest.  He died alongside St. Paul Chong, a seminarian who was himself close to ordination. Not only did the lives of these two men and the other hundred martyrs impact a nation of people and draw others closer to Jesus Christ, but these saints, we have acknowledged publicly and devotionally, modelled for us that true kinship with Jesus.

They are a sign for us all of what it means to be kindred spirits with Jesus Christ and His Disciples.

As Christians we may suffer different persecutions; perhaps the persecution for our ideological differences, living in a society that see Our Way, Truth and Life as ridiculous or obsolete. We need to look at this as a joyful opportunity to embrace more deeply Jesus Christ and knowing and growing in the understanding of the Will of God day by day, give witness to Him and we remind ourselves today in light of the Gospel and these holy martyrs of what it means to be kindred spirits with the One True God