Saturday in the 27th Week of Ordinary Time, October 12, 2024

Luke 11, 27-28

While Jesus was speaking, a woman from the crowd called out and said to him, “Blessed is the womb that carried you and the breasts at which you nursed.” He replied, “Rather, blessed are those who hear the word of God and observe it.”

This exchange between a woman and Jesus took place while he was teaching.  On the face of it, the woman offers the Lord praise using an Ancient Middle Eastern idiom of honoring the mother in order to praise the son, and then the Lord replies offering honor back at the person who had spoken to him, in line with the custom of the time. But this honor is conditional: Blessed are you provided that you observe the word of God which you have heard.  For, it is not enough to hear the word of God.  One could happen by the place where the Lord was teaching and hear him but he is not really listening.  It is observing it, the carrying out of the word of God, that brings blessedness.  

The woman and Jesus use the same word “blessed” but they mean it in very different ways.  It was usually used to wish material prosperity upon a person.  By contrast, Jesus means it according to its supernatural meaning, the bestowal and enjoyment of grace, since those who are hearing the word of God and are keeping it are acting out of faith in the word of God.  Jesus says “who hear” and not “who read” because he himself was teaching with his voice the word of God and doing so in a way that people could understand him.

The woman in this Reading seems to praise the Blessed Mother, who bore Jesus in her womb and nursed him, and then, it seems, Jesus takes the praise from her and applies it to others instead.  This idea is fostered by the translation of the Greek menoon as “rather”: “Rather, blessed are those, etc.”  However, the word can also be translated as “indeed”, and “yea, verily”.  Thus, we can understand the Lord is confirming that his Mother is indeed blessed through her bearing and nursing him — for nurturing and raising him — and, beyond that, for hearing the word of God, delivered to her by the Angel Gabriel, and keeping it: “Let it be done to me according to your word.”  And in saying “those”, he means all who, following the example of the Blessed Virgin, nourish their faith through prayer, and then listen to the word of God in the Gospels, and carry it out in their actions.