Mark 3:34 — Community Reflections

MARK 3:34 — KING JAMES VERSION 0

“And he looked round about on them which sat about him, and said, Behold my mother and my brethren!”

Then he looked at those seated in a circle around him and said, here are my mother and my brothers — the gesture is as important as the words: Jesus looks at the crowd seated around him and names them as his family. The circle around him is the physical form of the community he is defining — people gathered around Jesus, oriented toward him, in his presence. The here are my mother and brothers names them into relationship: these are not disciples at a formal distance but family in intimate proximity. The kingdom community is not an organization to join but a family to belong to, with the relational bonds that family implies: loyalty, care, mutual obligation, and shared identity.

Church Fathers on Mark 3:34

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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