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

Luke underlines the importance not only of listening to God’s Word but also keeping it.

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Concluding the Sermon on the Plain, Jesus says that the person who listens to his words and acts on them is his true disciple (6:47).

In the Gospel, when a woman from the crowd calls his mother blessed for having brought him to the world, Jesus says that true beatitude rather belongs to those who hear the word of God and observe it.

Rather than belittling the role of Mary, Jesus points to her as a true disciple, indeed, the first disciple, because, in Elizabeth’s encomium of her, Mary is blessed because she believed that what was spoken to her by the Lord would be fulfilled (1:45). St. Augustine has Jesus say these words: “My mother, whom you call blessed, is indeed blessed, because she keeps the word of God. Not because in her the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, but because she keeps that same word of God by which she was made and which, in her womb, became flesh” (Tractates on the Gospel of John, 10, 3).