Mary's intervention

Mark gives us a few words about Mary this Sunday which seem to challenge popular conceptions about the Blessed Mother.

What the church teaches us about Mary, the mother of Jesus of Nazareth, comes primarily from four sets of sources: Luke's Gospel (including one mention near the beginning of Acts); John's Gospel; the church's extra-biblical deposit of faith; and approved post-apostolic-era apparitions.  

Luke gives us the most vivid picture of Mary: the young woman who boldly speaks to, and assents to, God's messenger; who undertakes the difficult journey to visit Elizabeth; who gives birth in an animal shelter; who desperately searches the capital city for three days, looking for her lost boy; who takes to heart and reflects upon what she sees and hears about her son.  Mary also is mentioned a handful of times in Matthew, but usually as accompanying Joseph, who is the protagonist (along with Jesus, of course) in Matthew's infancy narrative.

In John, we see Mary a bit older, as the mother of an adult child (a role which it might benefit the church to spend more time reflecting about), gainsaying him at the wedding at Cana, and standing by him as he dies.  

Outside of these biblical texts in which Mary is a subject, the church believes and teaches some other Marian dogmas, such as the Immaculate Conception, the Assumption and her title as Mother of God, for which there exist no expository biblical passages, although faith-filled readers over the centuries have identified a number of biblical passages which they see as alluding, poetically or allegorically, to these dogmas.  But those passages don't define who Mary is; they support who we already think she is.

Finally, there are Mary's appearances in later times, in places such as Tepeyac, Lourdes, Fatima and even Wisconsin.   These religious experiences, which include private messages, have further filled in and colored what the church knows, believes and teaches.

The cumulative impact of these sources, together with two millenia of reflection, prayer, rosaries, preaching, catechizing, theologizing, official pronouncements, artwork, song-making, and so on, has given us the Mary who inhabits both our imaginations and the popular imagination.  Chances are very good that whatever Catholic parish church(es) we worship at have one or more statues and/or images on walls, ceilings or stained glass that encapsulate and reinforce that popular conception.

But.

This Sunday, the appointed Gospel reading is from Mark (3:20-35).  In the Catholic cycle of Sunday readings, Mark's Gospel is only traversed once every three years, and this particular passage doesn't always come up on Sundays in Mark's year; it does this year because Easter was early, so Sundays in Ordinary Time start back up earlier this year than they do during many other Marcan years.  

This passage includes the only appearance of Mary in Mark's Gospel.  Mark's Gospel doesn't have an infancy narrative at all; and either Mary didn't figure prominently in the community for which Mark wrote, or for whatever reason she didn't make the final cut - except for the passage we'll hear this Sunday.  

Here is the Gospel reading for this Sunday:

Jesus came home with his disciples.

Again the crowd gathered,

making it impossible for them even to eat.

When his relatives heard of this they set out to seize him,

for they said, "He is out of his mind."

The scribes who had come from Jerusalem said,

"He is possessed by Beelzebul,"

and "By the prince of demons he drives out demons."

Summoning them, he began to speak to them in parables,

"How can Satan drive out Satan?

If a kingdom is divided against itself,

that kingdom cannot stand.

And if a house is divided against itself,

that house will not be able to stand.

And if Satan has risen up against himself

and is divided, he cannot stand;

that is the end of him.

But no one can enter a strong man's house to plunder his property

unless he first ties up the strong man.

Then he can plunder the house.

Amen, I say to you,

all sins and all blasphemies that people utter will be

forgiven them.

But whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit

will never have forgiveness,

but is guilty of an everlasting sin."

For they had said, "He has an unclean spirit."

His mother and his brothers arrived.

Standing outside they sent word to him and called him.

A crowd seated around him told him,

"Your mother and your brothers and your sisters

are outside asking for you."

But he said to them in reply,

"Who are my mother and my brothers?"

And looking around at those seated in the circle he said,

"Here are my mother and my brothers.

For whoever does the will of God

is my brother and sister and mother."

Regarding Mary, this passage raises three difficulties:

1. It presents Mary as seeking to prevent Jesus from pursuing his ministry;

2. It states that Jesus had brothers and sisters, which would seem to be a problem for the church's claim that Mary is "ever-Virgin"

3.  It presents Jesus as denying Mary, implying that she is not doing the will of God.

I don't have a large appetite for Catholic apologetics, although I recognize that it's necessary, and I'm grateful for those who can do it both well and charitably.  I suppose this passage looms quite large among those who would question the church's teachings about Mary; and I'm aware that there are Catholic answers available to counter those objections.  

For myself, I think it's likely that something like this really happened; that Mark's Gospel (according to the mainstream scholarly view, the earliest of the four Gospels, almost surely written when witnesses to Jesus's life and ministry were still alive) is here giving us a relatively unvarnished look at Mary; and that if we want to keep in our minds and our imaginations a true picture of Mary, this is part of it.