by Fr. Tommy Lane
A lot of people ganged up against Jesus in today’s Gospel (Mark 3:20-35).
The crowd would not give Jesus and his disciples “time out” or “down time” to eat or rest.
Jesus’ relatives, his cousins, thought he was out of his mind. At that time in Palestine, cousins were referred to as “brothers and sisters.” Ancient Hebrew did not have a word for “cousin” and so when the New Testament was written in Greek, cousins were called “brothers and sisters” continuing the Semitic usage. Our Lady was ever-virgin. We see Jesus’ cousins in John 7 urging Jesus to go to Jerusalem to work miracles there (7:3) but at the same time John tells us they didn’t believe in Jesus (7:5) so it looks like they were being sarcastic. However, after Jesus’ resurrection they did come to believe in Jesus and we see that one of them, Jesus’ cousin James, became what we could call, in today’s terms, the bishop of Jerusalem (Acts 12:17; 15:13; 21:18; see Gal 2:9) after Peter left Jerusalem to go to Rome (Acts 12:17).
The scribes, whom we might describe as the theologians of Jesus’ day, ganged up against Jesus and thought the worst of Jesus even thinking he was using evil powers (Mark 3:22). Even though Jesus was doing good, they thought of evil. How strange. Even today, those who have a vocation often have little or no support from their family to proceed with answering their vocation or worse still, opposition. It is not like that in every case, but it is often.
There are many attempts nowadays also to gang up on the Gospel to try to silence it because the Gospel challenges us and urges us to move out of our comfort zone. Our comfort zone is comfortable so if the Gospel challenges us to move out of our comfort zone, then some try to silence the Gospel or gang up against it or just ignore it and give it the silent treatment or do like the scribes—misrepresent the Gospel or the motives of those who live the Gospel. It is easier to mispresent the Gospel or the motives of those who live the Gospel than to convert! Today’s Gospel is occurring all around us.
Sometimes people ask me what is the sin against the Holy Spirit that will never be forgiven. I find the explanation of Pope John Paul II helpful. In one of his encyclicals he wrote that the sin against the Holy Spirit is refusal to repent and therefore refusal to accept forgiveness: “One closes oneself up in sin, thus making impossible one’s conversion, and consequently the remission of sins, which one considers not essential or not important for one’s life. This is a state of spiritual ruin, because blasphemy against the Holy Spirit does not allow one to escape from one’s self-imposed imprisonment.” (Dominum et vivificantem 46)
Jesus challenged his listeners to look at family in a new way. When Jesus was told his mother, and brothers and sisters, that is, his cousins, were outside the house looking for him, Jesus responded that anyone who does the will of God is his brother and sister and mother. In other words, in the Church we are the family of Jesus. A parish that I visited had this message on the parish phone which was the first thing you heard whenever you called the parish: “Welcome to St. [Name] Parish, where we are family.” The Church is the family of Jesus.
Sometimes unfortunately non-Catholics misunderstand the statement of Jesus about his mother and brothers and sisters (Mark 3:34-35) and another similar one, and misrepresent Our Lady and her role in our salvation. Jesus is not downplaying Our Lady’s role in our redemption. To prepare Our Lady for her unique role in our salvation, she was immaculately conceived. At Cana, due to Mary’s intercession, Jesus changed water into wine, and not just any wine, but the best wine (John 2:1-11). It is very clear that on the cross Jesus gave Our Lady a new role as our spiritual Mother: Woman, behold your son (John 19:26) and we know that she continues to intercede for us in heaven. Her crucial role in our salvation is evident in the personal devotion of people to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary with pictures of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary side by side.
Our first reading concluded with God telling the serpent that Eve’s offspring would crush its head (Gen 3:15). Jesus is the one who crushed evil on Calvary, and we await its final crushing at the end of time. The inspired text of Genesis refers to Jesus crushing Satan, but a translation of that text says “she,” referring to Our Lady, will crush Satan’s head. These two ways of looking at that last line of our first reading, Jesus crushing the head of Satan and Our Lady crushing the head of Satan, reflect the important role Our Lady played in our redemption. The image of Our Lady on the front of the miraculous medal is Our Lady crushing the head of the serpent. There is one very dramatic way in which we can see Our Lady crushing the head of the serpent. The Aztecs, in what we now call Mexico, used to worship serpent gods and are thought to have sacrificed up to 50,000 humans every year to their gods including one child in five. Within one decade after Our Lady appearing to St. Juan Diego, millions of Aztecs had converted to Christianity. Our Lady crushed the head of the serpent in a very dramatic way. There are many other examples of Our Lady’s intervention throughout history around the world but that is the most dramatic and the biggest mass conversion of all time.
Many people ganged up against Jesus accusing him of evil, but Jesus is the one who crushed the head of Satan, and Mary, our spiritual Mother, continues to crush the head of Satan playing a crucial role in our salvation.
© Fr. Tommy Lane 2024
This homily was delivered in a parish in Ireland.
More Homilies for the Tenth Sunday of Year B
Related Homilies: Possessed by God 2024
First Reading: Where are you?