Tuesday in the Sixteenth week of Ordinary Time, July 21, 2020

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.”

“While Jesus was speaking to the crowds.” As we consider the incident reported by St. Matthew in his Gospel we should keep in mind that it occurred while Jesus was teaching. It can be inferred that he was seated in a house or in the house’s courtyard and that the crowd was very large. Matthew does not say so explicitly but it seems as though this is Peter’s house in Capernaum, which Jesus used as a base when he ministered in Galilee. Since the crowd here is large, the time might have been around that of the midday meal when men and women ceased their work and ate and rested before going out to finish up for the day.

“His Mother and his brothers appeared outside, wishing to speak with him.” St. Albert the Great, in his commentary on this Gospel, sees their arrival and their attempts to speak with him as interruptions of a holy work.  Now, let us imagine someone giving a public lecture at a university or other public place and the lecturer’s relatives pounding on the door of the hall and calling out for the lecturer to stop what he is doing and attend to their needs. What the relatives do here goes beyond that importunity because the Lord is teaching the crowds about God and the Kingdom of Heaven.  

“Your Mother and your brothers are standing outside, asking to speak with you.” The name of the person who says this to the Lord is not given. Clearly, he is interrupting Jesus, who might have been in the middle of a parable or some other words revealing divine mysteries. Jesus did not waste a word and every word he spoke is precious, except perhaps to the man who burst out with information the Lord could not have been ignorant of. The persistent rudeness of his relatives would have agitated those who had come to listen to the Son of God, causing them to talk. St. Albert sees this as a dilemma or even as a temptation posed by the man: what is more important, family, worldly affairs, or the work of religion?

“Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?” The Lord, as he so often does, refuses to give a direct answer according to the framing of the situation presented to him. Instead, He ignores this and points out the deeper truth. He begins with a simple but unusual question, for surely he knew who his mother and relatives were. His answer would have come both as a surprise but also as the truth: “Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my heavenly Father is my brother, and sister, and mother.” Jesus reveals that his call to preach and to teach came before all else and that those who belonged to him were to be identified not through the accident of biology but through imitating him in the perfect dedication to God’s holy will. The most sacred duty, then, is to God, and all other duties must be ordered to that.

We might wonder what role did the Blessed Virgin have in the deeds of her relatives, for she was named among them. Since her will was fully aligned with God,  she would have had no part in interrupting her Son. She had come up from Nazareth, perhaps a three days walk in rough country, to see her Son and very likely to protect him from these relatives who not only did not believe in him but thought that he was mad: “They went out to lay hold on him. For they said: He is become mad” (Mark 3, 21).

Their attempt did not draw Jesus away from his work. Instead, the interruption became the occasion for a revelation: natural kinship with Christ is a great good, but the deepest kinship with him is formed by obedience to the Father. In this sense the Blessed Virgin was not displaced by the Lord’s words. She fulfilled them more perfectly than anyone else.