WHO IS MY MOTHER?

Whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother,

S. Matt.  XII, 50.

Grant, we beseech thee, almighty God, that we may keep with an immaculate heart the sacrament which we have received in honour of the blessed virgin mother Mary; so that we who celebrate her feast now, may be found worthy when we have left this life to pass into her company.  Through &c.

SARUM MISSAL.

Our Blessed Lord had begun his ministry of preaching.  The mark of the early days of that preaching was success.  Crowds came about Him wherever He taught.  The fact that there were frequent miracles of healing no doubt added to the popularity that He achieved.  It was largely the popularity of a new and strange movement, of a preaching cutting across the normal roads of instruction to which the Jewish people were accustomed.  There was a fascination about its form, its picturesque way of conveying its meaning, its use of the parable drawn from the everyday circumstances of life.  There was nothing of hesitation in the words of the new Preacher, but the ring of a dogmatic certainty.  “He taught as one having authority, and not as the scribes.”  He pushed aside the rulings of the traditional teaching with His, “Ye have heard it said ... but I say.”  “Verily, verily, I say unto you.”  And yet there are people who tell us that there was nothing dogmatic about our Lord and His teaching!  One would infer from much that is written upon the subject of our Lord’s teaching that He was a very mild giver of good advice but evidently the Scribes and Pharisees did not think so.  They saw in Him a man who was setting himself to undermine their whole authority.

This popularity was at a high point when an interesting event happened of which we have an account in the first of the Gospels.  “His mother and His brethren stood without, desiring to speak with Him.”  One gathers from the whole tone of the narrative that they were anxious about Him, that they looked with doubt upon this career of popular teacher that He was launched upon and felt that He was going too far.  He needed advice and restraint, perhaps; it may be that there were already reports of possible interference by the national authorities.  The fact that His “brethren” were present suggests the well meant interference of the older members of the family, who must always have thought Jesus rather strange.  That they had induced His mother to come with them makes us think that they were counting on the influence naturally hers, an influence which must always have been apparent in their family relations.  So we reconstruct the incident.