Who are my Mother and My Brothers? Correcting a Mistake, Recovering our Family
and we are the members.
As a final gift, right before He died, He gave His mother to His whole family, through giving her to the beloved disciple John. This was a gift for all of us, an exchange, an expansion of His family. In this exchange, the tradition has long taught, He also entrusted all of us to her maternal care.
Something of the interior meaning of this exchange, this gift, is what is truly revealed in the passage from the Gospel of St. Matthew with which we began this discussion. Jesus was not minimizing His relationship with His mother through these words given in response to the crowd, He was expanding it. He hungers, through Divine love, to include all of us in the "family circle" of God. In doing so, He invites us on the journey home to the Father's house.
In this exchange, Jesus opens up the interior importance and meaning of the motherhood of Mary - and through that relationship - the interior meaning of all family relationships. He gives to those with ears to hear and eyes to see, a key insight - familial relationships touch upon, model and make present an eternal mystery into which each of us who are baptized into Him, are invited! The Church is a family. Understanding this insight, and living it, is a key to the spiritual life. The Christian vocation is fundamentally about relationship and communion.
All who are incorporated into the Body of Jesus Christ through Baptism begin even now to experience the intimacy, (expressed in family relationships), that is the essence of the very life of the Trinity. Through His life, death and Resurrection (the "Paschal mystery"), He opens a way for every man, woman and child, who chooses to do the will of His Father, to enter into the very family circle of God through truly living our lives in Him.
His Father becomes our Father as we enter, through Him, into the inner life of the Trinity. He underscores this truth right before He ascended when He instructed Mary of Magdala to tell the disciples "I am going to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.' (John 20:17). Understanding this "mystery" requires prayer and revelation. Our Advent season presents us with such a time as a gift. Let us use it fully and grow in our Christian faith as members of the very Family of God.
- - -
Pope Benedict XVI's Prayer Intentions for January 2013
General Intention: The Faith of Christians. That in this Year of Faith Christians may deepen their knowledge of the mystery of Christ and witness joyfully to the gift of faith in him.
Missionary Intention: Middle Eastern Christians. That the Christian communities of the Middle East, often discriminated against, may receive from the Holy Spirit the strength of fidelity and perseverance.
Keywords: Mary, Mother of God, John the Baptizer, Church, Holy Trinity, marriage, family, conversion, communion, Incarnation, Advent, Deacon Keith Fournier
NEWSLETTERS »
Rate This Article
1 - 5 of 5 Comments
Leave a Comment
More Christmas / Advent News
- A Layman's Plea for Tolerance of Catholics
- A Question For The Christmas Season: Do You Want To Become A Saint?
- Every Leader Supporting Abortion is Herod, Every Child Killed a Holy Innocent
- Feast of St. Stephen, Proto-Martyr, Calls us to Reflect on the Gift of Deacons
- Fr. Sly on the Feast of St John in the Octave of Christmas
- Welcoming the Birth of the Redeemer in the Womb: Jesus was an Embryonic Person
- Merry Christmas: Love is Born on Christmas Morn and the World is Born Anew
- Pope St Leo the Great: Christian, Remember Your Dignity
- Pope Benedict XVI: If God's Light is Extinguished, Man's Divine Dignity is also Extinguished
Featured News
- Fr. Paul Schenck: Finding Living Faith on Catechetical Sunday
- The Movie Yellow: Incest as 'Normal' and Cassavates's Slides Into the World of Woes
- The Chicago School Teachers Strike Reveals the Need For School Choice
- The Sexual Barbarians and the Dissolution of Culture
- The Happy Priest Challenges Us to Ask: Who is Jesus to Me?
- Michael Coren on Canadian Public Schools: Teachers, leave those kids alone
- We Cannot Ignore Our Consciences: Cardinal Dolan On Religious Liberty
- In the Face of Danger, Successor of Peter Travels to Lebanon as a Messenger of Peace
- Reflections on the Dignity and Vocation of Women: Who or What?
@ No Way- "Mary did a good thing" does not quite cover her role as the mother of Christ, nor of the importance of what she did. " Christ is God and no one is more important or equally important than God" ignores what Christ himself says, and who he prays to. Clearly Christ is teaching the importance of love one another, but also of doing the will of our Father in heaven. I do not believe in all the catholic teaching concerning the blessed mother, not because I pick and choose what I want nor that I'm a catholic in name only. It's simply that I do not understand. Whether you are catholic or not and do not believe in the catholic teachings of the Blessed Mother and the saints, everything else Keith Fournier says here is accepted by most all christian religions. We should ignore these differences, and focus on doing the will of the father.
I disagree with the "Behold your mother/son" interpretation laid out here. What Christ is saying here is a re-iteration of the new covenant to "Love one another." He clearly shows that he meant business when he stressed the importance of brotherly love to each other. This claim is more in line with the teachings of Christ than the one in this write-up. Mary did a good thing, but Christ is God and no one is more important or equally important than God.
Those who claim it lessens the importance of his earthly mother clearly misunderstand. It raises the importance of God, and reminds us that we are all part of His family. Those who argue over the doctrine of Mary his mother miss the point completely. Come to my church go to heaven, go to that church go to hell. It's not about us individually/selfishly, " whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother." (Matthew 12:48-50), it's about God. Those who would claim anything else, those who want to divide us over doctrine, have also forgotten Jesus prayer, "May they all be one" John 17:21
Deacon Keith has said it well "Jesus gave His Mother(Mary) to us through His beloved disciple John". John himself can be considered as the beginning of this generation . The beauty of Christ is that He was born of the woman as per the law, such that she first come in Christ followed by the first family & relates to the bible in Chapter revelations which states - The seed of the woman who keep the commandments of GOD & have the testimony of Jesus Christ. IN His statement regarding His Mother & brothers he was emphasizing His first Love - THE FATHER in eternity, which ought to be ours too, through Him. For as the Bible states, before the foundations were laid GOD chose each one in His Christ, which Christ Jesus is the only way, life & Truth to The Father, without exceptions.
I love ur good works keep it up.