Abandon

That line in today's first reading is so impressive, with David "dancing with abandon before the Lord." The Liturgy may not seem to be replete with moments of abandon, but the responses do hint at it: "Thanks be to God!" "It is right to give him thanks and praise!" "Holy, Holy, Holy!" David's attitude is one of self-forgetting. That's what "abandon" is. He is fully taken with the presence of God, and loses himself in God. If you read this passage in the Bible, you see that shortly afterwards, his wife reproached him for losing his dignity, but David brushed her remarks off, reminding her that it was for the Lord. I thought it interesting that even in the Bronze Age, kings were expected to act with a certain gravitas, and David instinctively knew that the Lord's presence made all these human distinctions null and void.

Then we have Jesus, surrounded by a crowd of people who were doing the will of God, and he tells his own family that the will of God made even the human distinctions of blood ties irrelevant, surpassed by the Lord's presence with those who are united to him in his will.