Message of Abbot Paul - Tuesday 24th January 2023

As we’ve been reading the past few days, Sunday included, although from Matthew, Mark tells us how Jesus moved from Nazareth to Capernaum to begin his ministry and how Capernaum became his headquarters. Today, Mark, (Mk 3: 31-35), recounts how the family of Jesus came over to Capernaum from Nazareth to see him. We are not told why they came, nor is there any mention made that they might have been worried about him or preoccupied for him. We are simply told that they came asking for him. His mother and brothers and sisters want to see him. This description of the visitors is repeated no less than four times in the short episode. They want to talk with him. We don’t know whether they would have liked him to return to Nazareth or if they came bringing gifts from home, especially food. All we know is that they arrive, stand outside the house (it must have been crowded) and ask for him. The message is passed on to Jesus. He doesn’t get up to go out, but looks at the crowd, his hearers, and says, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” Then he adds, looking round at those sitting in a circle around him, “Here are my mother and my brothers. Anyone who does the will of God, that person is my brother and sister and mother.”

 

​Did he then go out to see them and speak with them? We don’t know, we’re not told. Perhaps that isn’t the point of the story, rather the words of Jesus that he is forming a new concept of family, not one based on blood ties but on faith and discipleship, his mystical Body, the Church, God’s family, in which all those who believe and follow him are brothers and sisters. Nevertheless, the Gospels present us with Mary, the Mother of Jesus, as the very first believer of the New Testament, she who believed God’s word and promise, said YES to God and conceived the Word made flesh, God Incarnate, the Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth. But who were these brothers and sisters? An ancient explanation is that they were the children of Joseph by an earlier marriage. We notice that Joseph isn’t mentioned after the infancy and childhood of Jesus, so he had probably died by then, leaving his older children, the half-brothers and sisters of Jesus in Mary’s household. This has always made sense to me and saves us searching after other explanations or theories.