Fr. Michael Williams

Confusion over Jesus’ identity is noticeable in today’s gospel from St Mark. I had a similar experience recently! It happened when I took my 22 year old niece to the recent Oasis concert in Heaton Park. There were seventy thousand people there and we found a clear piece of ground to stand. I kept noticing that a young woman kept staring at me and whispering something to the man she was with. Soon another young man showed up, and started whispering with the couple, and then they all looked over at me suspiciously! I was getting a bit disturbed by it all. Then the young man came over to me and said, ‘Are you a priest?’ I was amazed and said, ‘Yes, how do you know?’ He replied, ‘Well you married these two a couple of years ago in the Cathedral’. We all were amazed had a good laugh about it! And there was good news as she told me she was expecting her first baby!

To most people at that concert I was just another concert goer, but to a few people knew I was minister of the gospel! In the gospel today most of the townspeople of Nazareth cannot see who Jesus really is. He did not have a sign on His forehead saying, ‘Son of God’! The majority of them refuse to accept Him as the preacher of truth and worker of miracles. Mark says, ‘Most of them were astonished…This is the carpenter surely, the son of Mary, the brother of James and Joset and Jude and Simon? His sisters too are they not here’. Most people thought Jesus was just like everybody else- a worker, a member of a family, and nothing more. They cannot see beyond their own assumptions about Him; so they ‘would not accept Him’ as God’s Revelation.

I think it’s worth pointing out that the use of the English words -brothers and sisters- in the gospel can cause some confusion for some people. We know that the Scriptures and Tradition of the Catholic and Orthodox faith teach us that mysteriously Mary remained both Virgin and Mother throughout her life. To rejects this truth is to slip into heresy or false teaching! So why do we hear about Jesus’ brothers and sisters in today’s gospel? Well, let’s remember that the gospels were written in Greek, and uses the words adelphoi and adelphai- which has been translated into English as brothers and sisters. But these Greek words refer to male and female relatives in general, not necessarily to blood brothers and sisters. In fact in some places in the Bible there terms are sometimes used to refer to people are not even related to one another at all!

St Mark reports ‘Most of them were astonished……This is the carpenter surely…’. ‘Most of them’, but not all of them. A few people knew that He was much more than a carpenter and family member. Obviously Mary and Joseph knew about Jesus’ divine origins. But there were others also aware of Jesus’ heavenly status. For example, early in Mark’s gospel John the Baptist witnesses the Father’s voice from heaven say of Jesus: ‘You are my Son, the Beloved’. Also in the early parts of Mark’s gospel, it is the demons who recognise Him. They scream at Our Lord, ‘I know who you are! The Holy One of God’. And they tremble because Jesus has come to liberate mankind.

To know who Jesus really is requires the supernatural gift of faith. The Scriptures and the history of the Church reveals so many who put their faith in the Lord. It is not without struggle. Later in Mark we hear someone pray to Jesus, ‘Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!’. We need to continually ask Our Lord to increase our belief and faith in Him.

In that synagogue of Nazareth two thousand years ago Jesus ‘was amazed at their lack of faith’. Today He must still be amazed at the ‘lack of faith’ He sees, even amongst members of the Church. Many of the townsfolk of Nazareth wouldn’t open their hearts to Jesus, and many people today won’t open their hearts to Him. People often just intellectualise about Jesus, but have no depth of faith in Him. But if you truly put your faith in Him expect miracles!

Faith takes us beyond a mere intellectual understanding of Our Lord. Faith enables us to receive Our Lord’s wisdom and power. Real faith allows Christ to take possession of one’s heart, and transform it into a heart like His own, which is gentle and humble. And finally faith gives us the courage to ‘proclaim the Good News to the whole creation’ through our words and actions.