Family

One often hears the expression: “Family is what it is all about.”  Some might say: “Family is more important than anything else.”  There are several other ways that this sentiment is expressed, but the intention is always the same; namely, to express the primacy that family holds in our lives.

As important as it is in our own lives here and now, it was possible even more important for the people of the Middle East at the time Jesus was living.  While we would not even bat an eye at the notion that a member of our family might live in a different town, a different state, even a different country, that notion would be completely foreign to these people.  In most instances, brothers and sisters of the same family will eventually marry and move to their own homes with their spouse where they will raise a family.  At Jesus’ time, the brothers would bring their wives into the home of their father where they would live with their children.  The sisters would go to the homes of their husbands where they would live with and raise their children with her in-laws.  While our families are described as nuclear, their families were extended.  When the male parent passed away, the elder brother took his place, and the younger brothers would recognize him as the head of the family. 

Any thoughts of moving away from the family would be completely foreign to these people.  Family represented the past, the present and the future: past history and ancestry, present situation and business, future inheritance.  Leaving one’s family would mean that you would divorce yourself from your past, your present and your future.

So the Gospel reading that we hear in today’s liturgy is an extremely radical notion.  When Jesus was told that his family was waiting to see him, those surrounding him expected him to receive them immediately.  Instead Jesus utters a saying that would have exploded like a bomb in their midst: “Here are my mother and my brothers.  For whoever does the will of my heavenly Father is my brother, and sister, and mother.”  (Matthew 12:50) 

Jesus redefines his family.  He has gathered disciples about him with the Twelve and has designated them what Scripture scholars would call a “fictive family.”  Now blood or DNA do not define family.  Rather we are defined by our relationship to one another and God’s will for us.  As members of this family, we are also heirs of the Kingdom of God.  Our future is redefined and is established by virtue of our baptism into the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus.  God is not ashamed to call us the People of God, God’s Family.

Fr. Lawrence Jagdfeld, O.F.M., Administrator