“Blessed are those who hear the word of God and observe it”

How many times have we gone to church and heard a homily or sermon based on the scripture, and heard about how we could be better people, how we could serve more, pray more, give more, forgive more, and we all nodded our heads in agreement and thought, ‘what a great message!  Isn’t that priest wonderful?!’; and then we walked out of the building and shifted everything we had heard to the back burners of our mind.  We didn’t change; the priest didn’t change either.  We all just felt satisfied to hear a well delivered speech, and we walked away.  How often does that happen?

In today’s Gospel, Jesus doesn’t waste any time reminding us that the messenger is not as importance as the message.  He gets right to the heart of the message, which is: listen to the word, retain the word, be doers of the word.  We are blessed not just because we heard the word, but we are even more blessed when the word of God grows within us, is born from us, transforms us, even when we don’t understand it, and even when we don’t understand some of the suffering that would come with it.  We are blessed when we say, ‘yes, God; I will listen God; I will live as you ask; I will have faith God’.  Mary listened, the word was made flesh within her, she carried God within her, and her life was transformed.  Jesus listened, his life was transformed, and he transformed others.  They both heard God’s word and just obeyed.  They said yes to God.

When we listen, and we carry the word within us, we too, become transformed through faith.  The first reading says, “through faith you are all children of God; you are all one in Christ Jesus.”  Hearing that is one thing, but once we have imprinted those words on our hearts, let’s ask ourselves how God wants us to change; what transformation will occur after the complete digestion of the word?  What would our life and vision look like if we became doers of the word?  Let’s say yes to God.