Tuesday in the 16th Week of Ordinary Time, July 23, 2024

Matthew 12, 46-50

While Jesus was speaking to the crowds, his mother and his brothers appeared outside, wishing to speak with him. Someone told him, “Your Mother and your brothers are standing outside, asking to speak with you.” But he said in reply to the one who told him, “Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?” And stretching out his hand toward his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my heavenly Father is my brother, and sister, and mother.”

Here we have a rare mention of the Lord’s human family: his Mother and some male members of his clan.  St. John, for one, held a low opinion of these latter: “For neither did his brethren believe in him” (John 7, 5).  Several of his brethren did believe, however.  These evidently included the Apostles James (the son of Alphaeus, married to the Virgin Mary’s sister), Jude (the “brother” of James), and Simon the Zealot (another brother of James, according to Mark 6, 3).  We might expect some others of his kinsmen to have followed him as well.  

The Blessed Virgin traveled with these brethren, seeking Jesus.  The matter must have had some urgency for the Virgin and these men to seek him in this way, likely some family business.  At the same time, they were probably delayed in finding him because he moved fairly rapidly from one town to the next.  When they do locate him, he is inside a house and the size of the crowd does not allow them to get near the door.  They are forced to send a message in to him instead.  Jesus uses the occasion to teach the crowd about the intimacy shared by those who do the will of God — those bound together in grace.  The saints, he says, are nearer each other than any two people related merely by biology.  He says this to people for whom family ties were everything.  A person’s very identity and survival depended upon his or her family, genealogy, and tribal association.   What Jesus says turns Jewish culture on its head.  It is one of the Lord’s “hard sayings”.

But what does it mean to be the Lord’s “brother” or “sister” or “mother”?  St. Thomas Aquinas, commenting on these verses, says, “Any of the faithful who does the will of the Father, namely, who obeys him simply, is the Lord’s ‘brother’ [or ‘sister’] because he is like the One who fulfilled the Father’s will.  But the one who not only does this but also converts others, ‘begets’ Christ in others, and thus is made the Lord’s ‘mother’.  Galatians 4, 19: ‘My little children, of whom I am in labour again, until Christ be formed in you.’ ”

We see here how the Lord sees the sanctity of his natural Mother.  Not only does she give flesh to him, but she is his Mother in bringing others to believe in him.  As the elderly Simeon prophesied, “And your own soul a sword shall pierce, that, out of many hearts thoughts may be revealed” 

(Luke 2, 35), that is, through the prayers of this woman who suffered with her Son as he hung upon the Cross, many would come to believe.  

We ourselves may attain the high dignity of the brothers, sisters, and Mother of the Lord very simply — not by birth into a royal family, but by rebirth into the Holy Family.