Mark 3:32 — Community Reflections

MARK 3:32 — KING JAMES VERSION 0

“And the multitude sat about him, and they said unto him, Behold, thy mother and thy brethren without seek for thee.”

A crowd was sitting around him, and they told him, your mother and brothers are outside looking for you — the crowd serves as the intermediary, relaying the family's message. The crowd is sitting around him — the posture of disciples, of those who have come to hear and follow. The contrast between those sitting around Jesus inside and the family standing outside becomes the spatial metaphor for the saying that follows. Your mother and brothers are outside looking for you is an invitation to step out of the teaching and attend to family obligation — the kind of obligation that even Jewish law would have recognized as primary.

Church Fathers on Mark 3:32

Because the relations of the Lord had come to seize upon Him, as if beside Himself, His mother, urged by the sympathy of her love, came to Him.
Theophylact · 11th century

The brother of the Lord must not be thought to be the sons of the ever-virgin Mary, as Helvidius says [ed. note: The perpetual virginity of the Mother of God is reckoned by White, Bramhall, Patrick and Pearson, amongst the traditions which have ever been held in the Catholic Church. For an account of the heretics who denied it, see Bp. Pearson on the Creed, Art, 3, p. 272, note x., also Catena Aurea in Matt., p 58, note c], nor the sons of Joseph by a former marriage, as some…
Bede · 8th century

But let us be assured that we are His brethren and His sisters, if we do the will of the Father; that we may be joint-heirs with Him, for He discerns us not by sex but by our deeds.
Pseudo-Jerome · 5th century

Read all 5 entries in the readerCatena Aurea · St. Thomas Aquinas, tr. J. H. Newman · public domain

COMMUNITY REFLECTIONS

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