Tuesday in the Third Week of Ordinary Time, January 28, 2025

The Mother and brothers of Jesus 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 are standing outside, asking for you.” But he said to them in reply, “Who is my mother? Who are 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.”

Mark places his account of this episode before Jesus returns to Nazareth where the people reject him.  Luke, however, with a mind for proper chronology, places it after his rejection there.  If so, members of his family had already been alarmed by his behavior, now thinking that he has gone mad and is being made sport of in the towns neighboring Nazareth.  They come after him, intending to bring their wayward family member home.

“Your mother and your brothers and your sisters are outside asking for you.”  We know the names of some of the Lord’s brethren from texts such as Matthew 13, 55, which lists James, and Joseph, and Simon, and Jude.  These are male relatives, but not sons of the Virgin Mary.  Seeing members of the extended family departing for Capernaum, she went with them, wanting to protect her Son.  

“Who are my mother and my brothers?”  He does not go out to them but asks a question of the crowd.  Some might have expected that he would answer his question by praising his family members for their righteousness and by describing their heritage as descendants of David.  But he paused and looked around at the people sitting on the floor, listening intently to him.  They had come to hear him teach about the Kingdom of God.  Some had come from a distance.  “Here are my mother and my brothers.“. He may well have made a sweeping gesture with his arm to indicate the people around him.  “For whoever does the will of God.”  He teaches that it is not biology that causes people to belong to him but doing the will of his Father.  As St. John the Baptist warned the Pharisees: And think not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham for our father. For I tell you that God is able of these stones to raise up children to Abraham. (Matthew 3, 9).

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, whose feast we celebrate today, 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 labor again, until Christ be formed in you.’ ”

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 obedience to his Father’s will.