Today’s readings remind us that if circumstances make us choose between God’s will and our family, as painful as it may be, we have to choose God’s will. In the First Reading, Adam is caught. He put more trust in Eve than in God and fell. Scripture does not say Eve duped Adam. She offered him the forbidden fruit, and he let doubt about the Lord enter into his heart and sinned. When Adam says it was the woman “who you put here with me” it’s almost as if he’s accusing the Lord of putting him into this situation. Eve tries to pin all the blame on the serpent, but she is an adult, responsible for her actions. Sin may appear at times as the way to salvage or consolidate a relationship, but it always drives a wedge between us and between God and us.

In the Second Reading, Paul reminds us God’s will is not that we should choose between him and our family, but that our family should be united in faith. The Lord wants us to do his will because it is good and because it will be a source of abundant blessings for all people of good will. As believers, we’re called to share one spirit of faith in Our Lord and his promise of eternal life. Our Lord acts for our benefit, not against it, and he wants his grace to fill us so much that it “spills out” into grace for more and more people. When we’re faced with the difficulties, frailties, and uncertainty of a fallen world, we must not lose our trust in the Lord and his promises. Ultimately, that spirit of faith is our openness and collaboration with the Holy Spirit.

In the Gospel, Our Lord encourages us to focus on doing his Father’s will as something good. If we question the motives of God’s actions trouble awaits. Today’s Gospel invites us to imagine what was going through the mind of Our Lord’s family when news began to reach them of everything happening in his ministry: healings, people mobbing him from all over Palestine, non-stop work that didn’t even leave him time to eat, and an escape by boat as the only way to keep the crowds from flocking around him and following him constantly. The reaction of Our Lord’s family underscores the apparent insanity of the situation, so much that they’re wondering whether Jesus himself is insane. The reaction on the part of the people may seem disproportionate, but it also shows how lost and in need of truth and healing humanity was since the Fall. Since Adam and Eve, all the way to the coming of Our Lord, all generations were lost, and now, in the crazy world that resulted, Our Lord has come to find the lost.

Today’s Gospel is also a strong admonition regarding blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. An unforgivable sin should give pause to anyone, but in this case, Saint Mark explains what the Lord is condemning: calling the Holy Spirit an “unclean spirit.” Jesus works his miracles in the power of the Holy Spirit, but the scribes claim the demon Beelzebub is powering his works. A clearer blasphemy is not possible. If we see God’s will as bad, we see him as bad, and that’s not good. That is a sin, just like Adam and Eve at the start of salvation history, and we must reconcile with God and reconcile with his will for us and for all those we love.

The Catechism teaches us that Providence is “The dispositions by which God guides his creation toward its perfection yet to be attained; the protection and governance of God over all creation.” Creation for the Lord is a project, and it is a project he wants to have a good outcome. In his goodness, he watches over and cares for everything: “God cares for all, from the least things to the great events of the world and its history…. As the book of Proverbs states: ‘Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will be established.’” He wanted to give his creatures a role in this project, and so he gave us freedom so that we could work with him, or, if we chose, to work against him: “To human beings God even gives the power of freely sharing in his providence by entrusting them with the responsibility of ‘subduing’ the earth and having dominion over it. God thus enables men to be intelligent and free causes to complete the work of creation, to perfect its harmony for their good and that of their neighbours.”

Don’t shift the blame to Our Lord this week for anything in your life that is not going as you’d like. Adam and Eve tried to shift the blame for their faults to others. If we accept the blame for what we’ve done, the path to reconciliation and peace is opened. The worst tactic is pinning the blame on Our Lord for our sins or the sins of others that have affected us.