Tuesday in the Third Week of Ordinary Time, January 24, 2023

Mark 3, 31-35

The Mother of Jesus and his brothers arrived at the house. Standing outside, they sent word to Jesus and called him. A crowd seated around him told him, “Your mother and your brothers and your sisters are outside asking for you.” But he said to them in reply, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” And looking around at those seated in the circle he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”

“The Mother of Jesus and his brothers arrived at the house.”   For some people, particularly those opposed to the idea of the Mother of God’s perpetual virginity, this phrase speaks of the Lord Jesus’s biological brothers and sisters.  However, the names of these brothers and sisters, such as “James” turn out to belong to people who are the children of “the other Mary”, a woman who seems to have been the Virgin’s sister-in-law, step-sister, or possibly a cousin: “Mary the mother of James and of Joseph and Salome” (Mark 15, 40).  Perhaps the fact that most destroys the possibility of Mary having other children is that while dying on the Cross, Jesus tells his Apostle John to take care of her.  Had the Lord any brothers, particularly older brothers, the care of his Mother after his Death would not have been such a concern for him on the Cross.  Among these “brothers” mentioned in the present excerpt from the Gospel of St. Mark There could have been any number of uncles, cousins, and neighbors.  The Greek word translated as “brother” has very broad shoulders.

The distance between Nazareth and Capernaum was not great, about twenty miles, but the country was hilly and there may not have been roads between the two towns.  This would still allow one to walk from Nazareth to Capernaum in two days or less, even while avoiding the sun in the middle of the day.  If news had gotten to Nazareth that Jesus was “out of his mind” as Mark’s text earlier had said, his relatives could have gotten there quickly.

Now, Jesus had returned to Peter’s house following his appointment of the Apostles.  It was a fairly large house for the area since it housed, at the least, Peter and his wife, his wife’s mother, and his unmarried brother, Andrew.  Possibly there were servants.  Years later, after Pentecost, this house became a church, one of the very first, and it was used as a church.  Archaeologists have lately excavated the ruins of the ancient Byzantine church built on the site, containing beautiful mosaics, and discovered the original house.  

The crowd at the house was very large: “The multitude came together again, so that they could not so much as eat bread” (Mark 3, 20).  The Lord, ever preferring to feed the souls of others than feeding his own Body, taught them.  He must have taught for a long period of time to account for Mark’s phrasing, and still the people did not leave.  This gives us an idea of how starved the people were for the word of God, and how skilled they found the Lord as a teacher.  “Standing outside, they sent word to Jesus and called him.”  It is a little hard to get into the minds of the Lord’s “brothers”.  Perhaps they feared that he was making such scenes that people gathered to watch him for the sake of the entertainment he provided.  In that case, they would have been filled with shame to let it be known that they were related to him.  It is hard to feel sympathy for them, however; they were of no help at all when the crowd in the synagogue in Nazareth tried to kill Jesus after when he came to teach them.

“Your Mother and your brothers and your sisters are outside asking for you.”  The members of the crowd may have felt curious to meet the Lord’s Mother and brothers, but they made no room for them.  They had Jesus with them.  They had chosen the better part and were not going to give it up.  Rather, they would leave it up to him if he wanted to greet them.  The Lord then said something quite astounding: “Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”  He was identifying the people who came to learn from him as his mother, brothers, and sisters.  Here the Lord begins to teach the mystery of his holy Body, that those who are joined to him through baptism more belong to him than to anyone who is not baptized, including family members and relatives.

We might wonder what this means for his holy Mother.  It means that she is more holy for her consent to God ’s will in her conception of his Son than in her physically giving birth to him, as the Fathers teach us.  In his words, the Lord praises his Mother, the Handmaid of the Lord.  She had come to him in Capernaum in her duties as God’s Handmaid to aid her Son and also to protect him from the aggressive behavior of these relatives, whose demeanor she knew very well.  The Lord seems not to have met with these brothers after all.  None of the Evangelists say that he did.  Possibly they saw that that the people in Capernaum held him in high regard, and when he did not come out to them, and the day wore on, they left.  It is hard to think of the Blessed Virgin leaving him there, and we do find her along his women disciples who traveled with him, though in their own group, as according to custom.  This may have been the time when she left Nazareth for good.  But we never hear of her using her eminence in any way or asking for deference from the other women.  She always remained with the servants, ready to help, always eagerly doing the will of God.