While he was still speaking to the crowds, his mother and his brothers were standing outside, wanting to speak to him. Someone told him, ‘Look, your mother and your brothers are standing outside, wanting to speak to you.’ But to the one who had told him this, Jesus replied, ‘Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?’ And pointing to his disciples, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.’ Matthew 12:46-50
These two texts should be read in context of each other. In the first, Mary's motherhood is exalted; in the second, it is not demeaned because the two texts say the same thing, that is, Mary's motherhood is a consequence of her discipleship. Mary, before being a mother, was a disciple because she heard the Word of God through Archangel Gabriel and put it into practice by accepting to be the mother of God's only begotten Son. Mary was a mother because she was a disciple and not a disciple because she was a mother.
In a certain sense, Mary is not a mother by any special privilege, but because she was a disciple. "You're blessed because you believed," says her cousin Elizabeth, which means that Mary would not have been blessed if she had not believed. In Mary, as in all of us, it was faith that saved her and the fulfillment of the Word that made her the mother of Jesus.
This same path is offered to all of us by Jesus, that of being intimate with him as he and his mother are with each other. All we have to do is to listen to the Word and put it into practice. For whoever loves me, says Jesus, that is, whoever is or wants to be intimate with me, keeps my commandments (John 14:21).
Listening to the Word without putting it into practice is like building a house or a life on sand (Matthew 7:21-27), and being at the mercy of the winds and tides, time, fashions and situations, being a person without his or her own personality but guided by external factors, like a reed shaken by the wind (Matthew 11:7). And at the end of an inconsequential life to run the risk of the Lord telling them from inside, when they knock at the door of eternity, that he does not know them (Luke 13:27).
Another way of proving that the motherhood, both in Mary and in all of us, is the consequence of discipleship, that is, of hearing the word and putting it into practice, is the fact that Jesus gave his mother into the hands of the beloved disciple, that is, of the preferred disciple, the one who best obeyed his word. This disciple, by being authentic, became also the son of His mother (John 19:25-27).
Texts and contexts
The text that exalts Mary's motherhood is unique in Luke, there is no parallel in either Matthew or Mark. If feminists had to choose a gospel, Luke would certainly be the one chosen, because it places the most attention on the feminine, the one that gives more prominence to women, both in the life of Jesus and in his parables and events.
Both of the above texts, Luke (11:27-28) and Matthew (12:46-50), are preceded by the episode of the soul cleansed of demons that, by not being filled with good works, was later assaulted by other worse demons, thus ending up in a state worse than before.
From this we can conclude that the episode of the soul and demons serves, both for Luke as well as Matthew, as an illustration and proof that in fact the Word of God is either put into practice or is good for nothing for those who only hear it, and the state of their souls may be worse after hearing the Word and not putting it into practice, like that of the rich young man.
Negative spirituality
‘When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it wanders through waterless regions looking for a resting place, but not finding any, it says, “I will return to my house from which I came.” When it comes, it finds it swept and put in order. Then it goes and brings seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and live there; and the last state of that person is worse than the first.’ Luke 11:24-26
The text does not say so, but the woman's words were certainly inspired by the Holy Spirit. To do the woman justice, the text should say "a woman among the people filled with the Holy Spirit exclaimed..." The woman's exclamation took place after Jesus narrates what happens when a person succeeds in eradicating evil from his soul, but does not fill it with good works. The wisdom of Jesus touched the heart of this woman.
This text is unusual, but it alludes to a spirituality that I call negative, that is, of spending all our time and energy fighting evil without doing anything good. The people say, when death comes may it catch us confessed, that is, the important thing is not to have sinned. This spirituality is negative, because the focus is not on doing good, but on avoiding evil, on not sinning.
A person is not good because he avoids evil, but because he does good. Those who avoid evil overcome negativity and bring themselves up to zero; only those who do good take themselves above zero. The rich young man who went to Jesus was a worthy representative of the Old Testament, for since his childhood days he had observed the ten commandments; but when Jesus asked him for just one positive thing, he backed away; avoiding evil is much easier than getting out of one’s comfort zone and doing good.
The priest and the Levite passed by the badly injured man in front of them who had been robbed and beaten by thieves, and who needed help, because their concern was not to do good, but to avoid evil. The evil they were witnessing at that moment had not been caused by them, so it was perfectly moral to pass him by. A life based on avoiding evil leads to a lack of solidarity with one’s neighbour. Since the best defense is the attack, as the proverb says, the best way to fight evil is to do good.
Nature has horror of emptiness
It is a law of physics whose application in the spiritual field we see exemplified in the Gospel text that opens this article. The obsessive compulsion of cleanliness is a psychological illness: there are people who spend their lives washing their hands. Perhaps they can stand before God with clean hands, but God will tell them that their hands are empty...
If we want to remove the air from a glass, we can extract it artificially with a machine to create a vacuum, or we can naturally fill it with wine. That is, if we occupy our time and energies every day in doing good, we have no time left to do evil. In this way, we kill two birds with one stone, we do good and avoid evil. This is what Jesus’ unusual text suggests about an empty soul with no evil inside that if not filled with good, is quickly taken over by evil again.
At Last Judgment, those who are saved are those who helped the Lord in the poor and marginalized, and gave him food to eat, gave him drink, welcomed him when he was a stranger or pilgrim, clothed him when he was naked, and visited him when he was in prison or hospital.
Those who condemned themselves were not the wicked, but those who turned their backs on every opportunity that life gave them to do good, because their concern was to avoid evil (Matthew 25:31-46). They are the bad Samaritans, the ones who passed by when they saw a brother in need, the ones who say that the problem is not of their making.
According to the text about the last judgment in Matthew 25, our confession should no longer be to make an examination of conscience to seek the evil we have done, but to seek the good we have not done. We should even forget the evil we have done and do good deeds, look for opportunities to do good and not to lose the ones that life provides us. It is the sins of omission that lead to condemnation, the opportunities we had to do good and yet did nothing.
The Commandment of Love and the Golden Rule
Jesus replaced the ten commandments which practically only tell us what not to do, with a positive commandment: love God above all things and our neighbour as ourselves (Matthew 22:37-39). Saint Augustine best interprets these two commandments in his famous phrase, "Love, and do what you will". What you do for love will never be wrong. Understanding love, of course, as St. Thomas Aquinas defines it, to love is to will the good of the other.
And what you hate, do not do to anyone. Tobit 4:15
‘In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets.’ Matthew 7:12
The golden rule itself exists in all religions, and the Bible formulates it in a rule that we all learn in Sunday school: "Do not do to others what you do not want others do to you”. Minimalism is so ingrained in our psyche, the negative spirituality of avoiding evil without doing good, that our catechists did not teach us Jesus’ golden rule that is written in the positive sense, “Do onto others what you want others do onto you”. Instead, they have taught us the negative rule, the one found in the book of Tobit and which is the Jewish rule, included in the Old Testament.
Conclusion – Mary is the mother of Jesus because she was first a disciple, that is, she heard the Word and put it into practice. If we listen to the Word and put it into practice, we too can enjoy the same intimacy that Jesus and His mother had.
Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC
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