Hear It and Keep It

Most of us carry a little pride of association. The grandmother who never missed daily Mass, the parish our great-grandparents helped build, the cousin who became a priest, the Catholic school on the résumé. We mention them the way people mention a famous relative, and over time some of the glow rubs off. Gratitude for all of these associations is an acceptable response. However, beneath this pride there is a subtle danger lurking: letting the inheritance stand in for the life, as though blessing flowed to you through the family tree like a last name.

In today’s Gospel a woman in the crowd does something lovely and very human. She has just watched Jesus silence his critics, and she calls out a blessing on the mother who bore him: “Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts that you sucked!” Jesus answers with a blessing of his own, and it moves the honor from the family tree to the ear and the hands: “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it!”

Paul tells the Galatians the same thing about Abraham’s family. They had been told they needed the right mark on their bodies to belong. Paul says they already belong, because they were baptized and “have put on Christ,” and in him there is “neither Jew nor Greek,” neither slave nor free, neither male nor female.

Franciscan Media remembers Saint Francis Borgia today, a man born into an important family in 16th-century Spain who walked away from the advantages of his name to become a Jesuit. So here’s the question these readings put to you and me: are we living on an inherited faith, or on a word we hear and keep?

The Readings

First Reading: Galatians 3:22-29

But the scripture consigned all things to sin, that what was promised to faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.

Now before faith came, we were confined under the law, kept under restraint until faith should be revealed. So that the law was our custodian until Christ came, that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a custodian; for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.

Gospel: Luke 11:27-28

As he said this, a woman in the crowd raised her voice and said to him, “Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts that you sucked!” But he said, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it!”

Scriptural Analysis

Yesterday Paul promised the Galatians the blessing of Abraham and the Spirit through faith. Today he faces the obvious objection: if faith does all that, what was the law for? Just before today’s reading, Paul asks whether the law works against God’s promises. He refuses that idea outright (Galatians 3:21). Cardinal Albert Vanhoye and Peter Williamson explain that the law could tell people what to do without giving them the power to do it. “It does not change people on the inside; it leaves people where it found them, as sinners.” That’s why verse 22 says Scripture “consigned all things to sin.” The verdict was negative, they note, but God’s purpose behind it was positive: to let the promise take effect through faith in Christ.¹

Then Paul describes two periods of history. “Before faith came, we were confined under the law, kept under restraint until faith should be revealed.” The “we” in this context is Paul and his fellow Jews. Vanhoye and Williamson note that the verb for being held in custody means guarded or protected; the law was a real gift to Israel (Psalm 147:19-20). Frank Matera, in the Sacra Pagina commentary, agrees that protective custody is the better reading. The law was there to protect the people from the negative effects of the world. And the “faith” that came is a single event. Vanhoye and Williamson are careful here, because Abraham, the hero of the whole chapter, clearly had faith. Before Christ, faith “was a flower that had not yet blossomed,” because its foundation had not yet been laid. “That happened at Calvary.”²

Verse 24 gives the law a job title: “the law was our custodian until Christ came.” The Greek is paidagōgos (pai-dah-go-GOS), and Matera explains that he “was a household slave who led the young boy to school and generally supervised his conduct.” His work was to walk the child to the teacher and keep him out of trouble on the way. Vanhoye and Williamson like the way the New Jerusalem Bible puts it: “The Law was serving as a slave to look after us, to lead us to Christ.” Now the Teacher has come, and the escort’s work is done: “we are no longer under a custodian.”³

Then Paul turns from “we” to “you,” from the Jews to the Gentile Galatians: “in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith.” Vanhoye and Williamson read the jump in grammar as Paul’s conviction that what God did for Israel has opened to everyone. Then the means: “as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.” They point out that Paul says “into Christ,” because Christ is the person the believer is joined to in baptism. “Baptism actualizes faith in Christ.” The clothing image could sound like a change of costume, so they send us to Isaiah: “he has clothed me with the garments of salvation, he has covered me with the robe of righteousness” (Isaiah 61:10). “To be clothed in Christ brings a profound transformation.”⁴

Saint Thomas Aquinas spells out what clothing does. When someone puts on a garment, “he is protected and covered by it, and his appearance is that of the color of the clothing instead of his own.” So with Christ: the one who puts him on is covered against attack, and “in such a one nothing appears except what pertains to Christ.” Thomas adds a second picture: “just as burning wood takes on fire and shares in fire’s activity, so he who receives the virtues of Christ has put on Christ.”⁵ The Church still acts this out at every baptism she performs. The Catechism explains that the white garment “symbolizes that the person baptized has ‘put on Christ,’ has risen with Christ,” and that the newly baptized is now, in the only Son, a child of God with the right to pray the Our Father.⁶

Then verse 28: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Vanhoye and Williamson say the first pair is the one Paul cares about most, and that for a Jew to declare this God-given religious distinction overcome was extremely audacious. His entire identity as a Jew was based upon this distinction. Slave and free were the backbone of Roman society. The third pair runs differently in the Greek, “not male and female,” echoing Genesis 1:27. Paul knows perfectly well that marriage goes on. Matera points to 1 Corinthians 11 to show that he kept the roles of men and women, and Vanhoye and Williamson locate the denial at the most fundamental level, justification and incorporation into Christ, where every believer has one and the same dignity. They also notice that Paul writes “one” in the masculine, as in the “one new man” of Ephesians 2:15: the baptized together make one person in Christ. Thomas puts it plainly. In baptism, “you have all been made members of Christ, and you form one body, even though you are distinct individuals.”⁷

Verse 29 closes the circle Paul opened in verse 7: “And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.” Vanhoye and Williamson explain how Abraham’s offspring can be one man, Christ (Galatians 3:16), and also beyond counting. The offspring stays single because all the baptized are one in him. They go further. Genesis promised Abraham an heir from his own body (Genesis 15:4), and through baptism a believer is truly joined to Christ, Abraham’s physical descendant. So faith completed by baptism “gives believers the closest possible ties to Abraham, ties that are stronger than any that could come through circumcision.”⁸

Today’s Gospel is only two verses long, and only Luke records it. Jesus has just answered the charge that he casts out demons by Beelzebul. Pablo Gadenz notes that a woman interrupts with a beatitude meant to praise him by honoring his mother, and that, in a sense, she is fulfilling Mary’s own prophecy that all generations will call her blessed (Luke 1:48). Luke Timothy Johnson counts it as the eighth beatitude in Luke’s Gospel.⁹

Then Jesus answers: “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it!” That “rather” has made some readers think Jesus brushes his mother aside, but nothing could be further from the truth. Catholic tradition hears it as the highest praise of her. Gadenz points out that Elizabeth had already said why Mary is blessed: “blessed is she who believed” (Luke 1:45). Jesus’ beatitude echoes Elizabeth’s and names the deeper reason. Mary gave the model response to God’s word, “let it be to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38), “and thus she is the blessed Virgin Mary.” Johnson reads Jesus’ reply along the lines of Elizabeth’s blessing of Mary for believing, and he points back to Luke 8:21, where Jesus says, “My mother and my brethren are those who hear the word of God and do it.”¹⁰

The Fathers in the Catena Aurea (kah-TAY-nah OW-ray-ah) of Saint Thomas make the same point with real affection for Mary. Saint John Chrysostom says Jesus answered this way to show that his birth would have profited her nothing without her faith and good works, and then he turns it on us: if that is true of Mary, “much less will it avail us to have a virtuous father, brother, or son, while we ourselves are strangers to virtue.” Saint Bede says the woman’s blessing reaches further than she knew, to “those also who have desired by the hearing of faith spiritually to conceive the same Word.” And he gives Mary both blessings at once. She was blessed as “the temporal minister of the Word becoming incarnate; yet therefore much more blessed that she remained the eternal keeper of the same ever to be beloved Word.”¹¹

The Catechism ties the two readings together in a few lines. It defines obedience by its Latin root, ob-audire (ob-ow-DEE-reh), to hear or listen to: “To obey . . . in faith is to submit freely to the word that has been heard.” Then it names two models: “Abraham is the model of such obedience offered us by Sacred Scripture. The Virgin Mary is its most perfect embodiment.” Of Mary it adds, “It is for this faith that all generations have called Mary blessed.”¹²

Put the two readings side by side, and they meet at that definition. Paul says Abraham’s family is made by faith and baptism, by belonging to Christ, and at that level every inherited marker of race, rank and sex falls away. Jesus says God’s family is made by hearing the word and keeping it, and he sets his own mother at its head because she did both first and best. Abraham listened and went. Mary listened and said yes. The Galatians heard Paul preach, were baptized, and put on Christ. The whole household is built of people who heard.

Daily Application

The interior movement these readings ask for is to move from admiring the faith to keeping it. The woman in the crowd admired Jesus, and Johnson observes that Jesus answers by asking for the hearing and keeping of God’s word, which costs more.¹³ Most of us are comfortable admirers. We admire the saints, admire the Church’s teaching, admire the devout family we come from. To do so takes very little effort and requires very little change on our part. Paul and Jesus press the same question: what are you doing with the word now?

Start with hearing, which is harder than it sounds. Bede’s picture is worth carrying into Mass this weekend: to hear in faith is to conceive the Word spiritually, the way Mary conceived him in her body. Listen to the readings like someone expecting something to take root. Pick one line and carry it out the door. Then keep it, which in Scripture means guarding it and doing it. Chrysostom’s warning lands hard on those of us who lean on a holy family: a virtuous mother or brother avails us little while we ourselves are strangers to virtue.

And remember what you’re wearing. If you were baptized, you put on Christ. Thomas says a man takes on the color of his garment, and the one who has put on Christ shows nothing except what is Christ’s. That’s a high standard and a great consolation. When you’re tempted to size people up by the old categories (nationality, money, status, whether someone is the right kind of Catholic), Paul’s answer is that baptism has already made you one person with them in Christ. Pray the Our Father slowly today, the way the newly baptized pray it, as a child of God in the only Son.

Saint Francis Borgia is a good companion for this. Franciscan Media tells how he grew up in an important family in 16th-century Spain and advanced quickly at the imperial court, until a series of events, including the death of his beloved wife, made him rethink his priorities. He gave up public life, gave away his possessions and joined the new, little-known Society of Jesus, which elected him its head at 55. Franciscan Media’s reflection fits today’s Gospel: “Sometimes the Lord reveals his will for us in stages.”¹⁴ Borgia had a name that opened doors. He heard the word, and he kept it.

Hear the word today, and keep it. Put on Christ again, and let him be the only family resemblance anyone sees.

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Notes

1. ↑ Albert Vanhoye and Peter S. Williamson, Galatians, Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2019), 123-124.
2. ↑ Vanhoye and Williamson, Galatians, 125; Frank J. Matera, Galatians, Sacra Pagina 9 (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1992), 136.
3. ↑ Matera, Galatians, 136; Vanhoye and Williamson, Galatians, 126.
4. ↑ Vanhoye and Williamson, Galatians, 127-128.
5. ↑ Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Galatians, chap. 3, lect. 9, no. 184, at aquinas.cc.
6. ↑ Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed. (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997), no. 1243.
7. ↑ Vanhoye and Williamson, Galatians, 129-131, 134; Matera, Galatians, 143; Aquinas, Commentary on Galatians, chap. 3, lect. 9, no. 189.
8. ↑ Vanhoye and Williamson, Galatians, 132-133.
9. ↑ Pablo T. Gadenz, The Gospel of Luke, Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2018), 228; Luke Timothy Johnson, The Gospel of Luke, Sacra Pagina 3 (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1991), 185.
10. ↑ Gadenz, Gospel of Luke, 228; Johnson, Gospel of Luke, 185.
11. ↑ Saint John Chrysostom, Homily 44 on Matthew, and Saint Bede, quoted in Thomas Aquinas, Catena Aurea: Commentary on the Four Gospels, Collected out of the Works of the Fathers, vol. 3, St. Luke (Oxford: John Henry Parker, 1843), on Luke 11:27-28.
12. ↑ Catechism of the Catholic Church, nos. 144, 148.
13. ↑ Johnson, Gospel of Luke, 186.
14. ↑ “Saint Francis Borgia,” Saint of the Day, Franciscan Media, accessed October 5, 2026, franciscanmedia.org.

Books Cited

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• Albert Vanhoye and Peter S. Williamson, Galatians, Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture (Baker Academic, 2019)
• Frank J. Matera, Galatians, Sacra Pagina 9 (Liturgical Press, 1992)
• Catholic Church, Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed. (Doubleday / Image)
• Pablo T. Gadenz, The Gospel of Luke, Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture (Baker Academic, 2018)
• Luke Timothy Johnson, The Gospel of Luke, Sacra Pagina 3 (Liturgical Press, 1991)
• Thomas Aquinas, Catena Aurea: Commentary on the Four Gospels, 4-volume set (Baronius Press)