NOTES for Luk 8:16-21

"He answered them, My mother and My brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it." Today we read the Lord's words, which speak of the love between mother and child as something that leads beyond earthly feelings and becomes for us a kind of bridge to the knowledge of God's love. The parallels are close, even to the point that these words, like the words from the book of Sirach, cut and grate on the ear if they are read not prayerfully, but in the ordinary way.

But in order to try to understand, let us turn to the book of Psalms. "Have I not calmed and quieted my soul, like a child weaned from its mother? my soul is within me like a weaned child" (Ps 130:2). A great deal of what the Lord says is a direct answer to the questioning of the book of Psalms. This is understandable, for that book is a kind of sum of all prayerful sighing, of everything we want to say to God, while Christ is the center of what the Lord wants to say to us.

So let us look closely at this image of a child weaned from its mother's breast. This is how a person feels in the world: every person seeking the meaning of his life and the lives of those he loves, seeking a love that is not afraid of decay, seeking the sources of that inexpressible feeling of holiness that he senses in his chest. It is a brilliant image... The Lord gave birth to the human being into the world, nourished him, and released him from Himself, while the human being so longs to press his little nose to His breast again. Without Him it is so frightening, sad, lonely, cold, and hungry. These are human feelings.

But then Christ says... My mother and My brothers are those who hear the word of God... The reunion of mother and child, and of sisters and brothers with one another, has taken place; harmony has been restored with His coming into this world. Only it is strange: everything is reversed, and the images of mother and child appear to change places. Is this accidental? Was it just said because the occasion presented itself, because His mother came and His brothers came?

But nothing is accidental. Nothing is meaningless. As the great physicist Einstein said, "The Lord God does not play dice." Therefore in everything, in everything, we can look for meaning. So why did the images change places compared with the book of Psalms? Perhaps because pure love is a relationship between two who are fundamentally equal, or more precisely, commensurable. We cannot love an ant; it is too small. But we can love a kitten. Yet God is far more perfect than we are than we are more perfect than an ant; we are far less commensurable. And when this logic is broken through, one can no longer simply take the relationship of mother and child and place it directly on the relationship of God and His child. It is only a bridge. One can cross it in order to begin to know the love of God. And that means that the change of order alters nothing. The main thing is that the logic of incommensurability has been broken through; the main thing is that wholeness has been restored.

But there is also a simpler meaning. Perhaps Jesus is telling us that we are no longer little, that we are no longer infants; God has weaned us from His breast by bringing us into this world. Yet no longer, for all His love for us, can He put us to the breast again. Five-year-old children are not put to the breast.