There is a natural instinct in parents to protect their children.
There are rare exceptions to this, and they need be noted.
Our television screens are filled with nightly news clips of Gaza women and men scurrying with the child/children to find shelter.
Or again trains filled with mothers and their children exiting the major cities of Ukraine.
Men and women in the highlands of Papua New Guinea dig with their bare hands.
This Sunday’s Gospel has a rawness to it that the inclination is to ignore, or at least skip over the text.
St Mark in his very direct way, pulls up short:
The crowd came together again, so that they could not even eat. When his family heard it, they went out to restrain Jesus, for people were saying, “He has gone out of his mind.” (Mk. 3: 20 -21)
Indeed, the consensus was Jesus was possessed by Beelzebul, the Prince of Demons. [An alternate spelling has Beelzebub which translates as ‘Lord of the Flies’ – note the novel by William Golding.
If we dare remove the verses 22 – 30 from our text, the passage now reads,
“The crowd came together again, so that they could not even eat. When his family heard it, they went out to restrain Jesus, for people were saying, “He has gone out of his mind.” (Mk. 3: 20 -21)
“Then his mother and his brothers came; and standing outside, they sent to him and called him. A crowd was sitting around him; and they said to him, “Your mother and your brothers and sisters are outside, asking for you.” And he replied, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” And looking at those who sat around him, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.” (Mk 3: 31 – 34)
Why had his mother and his brothers arrived at the door?
Why were they asking for him?
They had come to restrain him! (v31)
Restrain, similar words from the dictionary include hold back, hinder, restrict.
His family considered he, Jesus, was out of his mind!
Today we commit such persons to psychiatric care and medication.
In a word they had come to take him to the safety of the home!
The struggle I had for many years was to allow Mary to be the woman and mother she was, rather than the woman and mother we have made her out to be.
Mary was a 1stC Jewish woman. She was not made from porcelain or ceramic.
She was not the wrinkle free ‘Virgin at Prayer’ of the artist, Giovanni Battista Salvi da Sassoferrato and others like him.
Mary, and other members of the family thought Jesus had gone mad!