RBWords

     Jesus' relationship with his family seems, at best, to have been ambiguous!  We know from the Gospel of Mark that the reason his family wished "to talk with him," was that they were going to do an "intervention" and get him out of the public eye!  Since family, clan, and tribe are the primary forms of relationship in the Middle East, this was a serious matter!  The evangelists use this to show how Jesus suffered rejection, even by his own family!  In the scene in today's gospel scripture, Jesus turns the primary relationship into one of discipleship.  St. Paul, in his Letter to the Romans, speaks of our "adoption" by God through faith and baptism so that we become "co-heirs with Christ."  Since I come from a large family, I find the idea of being "kin" to Jesus a very interesting one, indeed!

     In my pastoral experience, I have met non-Catholic students who became interested in Catholicism but struggled with the knowledge that this commitment could mean rejection by their parents and other family members!  To be "disowned" because of religious faith is a hard experience.  This can occur also when a non-Catholic person marries a Catholic.  For many reasons, the families cannot transcend their own religious commitments to embrace the outsider, even if that outsider is a devout Christian or Jew or Moslem or Hindu, etc.  It seems to me that we should pay attention to the line, "Whoever does the will of my heavenly Father is my brother, and sister, and mother."  I am not advocating "relativism" here.  I AM advocating respect and recognition that the Holy Spirit can create discipleship in ways that might be different from "ours."  Even in Jesus' time, there was a class of persons recognized by the Jewish community as "God-fearers," who were entitled to respect and acceptance of a kind.  Even so, Jesus recognized faith in pagan Roman centurions and Canaanite and Samaritan women!   Jesus may have a lot more kinfolk than we realize!   AMEN