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While Jesus was speaking to the crowds,
his mother and his brothers appeared outside,
wishing to speak with him.
From outside could have come anyone, with any worldly status, even a king or a high priest, and Jesus might have responded similarly, saying that it was within, within the courts of his presence that were found the members of a truly royal priesthood. No goods that were found in the world outside could be compared with those that were found in Jesus himself. This was the reason that he said that "among those born of women there has arisen no one greater than John the Baptist" but that "Yet the one who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he" (see Matthew 11:11).
Someone told him, “Your mother and your brothers are standing outside,
asking to speak with you.”
We might hear this and assume that Jesus was minimizing the importance of his mother. But this was not quite right. He was minimizing the importance of her natural blood relationship to him within his Kingdom, but not her relationship entirely, nor even her motherhood. Mary, more than anyone else in history was one who consented to and cooperated with the will of the heavenly Father of Jesus, and precisely for this reason became his mother in a spiritual as well as a physiological sense. With her things happened in a way that reversed the normal order of the world where the natural came first and the spiritual had to build on such foundations as it supplied, however robust or inadequate. But precisely in order to begin the true process of reconnecting the world of nature with the spiritual order of heaven a reversal and a change was needed. Thus it was with the fiat of Mary to the archangel Gabriel that the story of our salvation reached its final phase. Nature had proven itself unable to claw or crawl its way back to God on its own. So God empowered a lowly virgin with grace in order that the world could be renewed from the inside out. He truly cast down the mighty from their thrones and lifted up the lowly. It was never primarily about what Mary brought to the table, but rather about what God had already done for her, and the way she responded and cooperated to that fullness of grace that had been bestowed.
“Here are my mother and my brothers.
For whoever does the will of my heavenly Father
is my brother, and sister, and mother.”
It is not only Mary who is invited into the spiritual family of Jesus but all of us. Despite how the invitation of Jesus may sound ("whoever does"), it does not come about in the first place on the basis of our effort. Rather, as with Mary, it is a response to the grace we have first received, in our case through faith in baptism. Thus it is as a gift that we become sons and daughters through the Spirit of adoption (see Romans 8:15). But like Mary we must not only receive the grace but make our lives a response to the grace in order for it to be real in our lives. Without that it is but wasted potential.
his mother and his brothers appeared outside,
wishing to speak with him.
From outside could have come anyone, with any worldly status, even a king or a high priest, and Jesus might have responded similarly, saying that it was within, within the courts of his presence that were found the members of a truly royal priesthood. No goods that were found in the world outside could be compared with those that were found in Jesus himself. This was the reason that he said that "among those born of women there has arisen no one greater than John the Baptist" but that "Yet the one who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he" (see Matthew 11:11).
Someone told him, “Your mother and your brothers are standing outside,
asking to speak with you.”
We might hear this and assume that Jesus was minimizing the importance of his mother. But this was not quite right. He was minimizing the importance of her natural blood relationship to him within his Kingdom, but not her relationship entirely, nor even her motherhood. Mary, more than anyone else in history was one who consented to and cooperated with the will of the heavenly Father of Jesus, and precisely for this reason became his mother in a spiritual as well as a physiological sense. With her things happened in a way that reversed the normal order of the world where the natural came first and the spiritual had to build on such foundations as it supplied, however robust or inadequate. But precisely in order to begin the true process of reconnecting the world of nature with the spiritual order of heaven a reversal and a change was needed. Thus it was with the fiat of Mary to the archangel Gabriel that the story of our salvation reached its final phase. Nature had proven itself unable to claw or crawl its way back to God on its own. So God empowered a lowly virgin with grace in order that the world could be renewed from the inside out. He truly cast down the mighty from their thrones and lifted up the lowly. It was never primarily about what Mary brought to the table, but rather about what God had already done for her, and the way she responded and cooperated to that fullness of grace that had been bestowed.
“Here are my mother and my brothers.
For whoever does the will of my heavenly Father
is my brother, and sister, and mother.”
It is not only Mary who is invited into the spiritual family of Jesus but all of us. Despite how the invitation of Jesus may sound ("whoever does"), it does not come about in the first place on the basis of our effort. Rather, as with Mary, it is a response to the grace we have first received, in our case through faith in baptism. Thus it is as a gift that we become sons and daughters through the Spirit of adoption (see Romans 8:15). But like Mary we must not only receive the grace but make our lives a response to the grace in order for it to be real in our lives. Without that it is but wasted potential.
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