Salve, Regina, Mater Misericordiae.
May the Lord Jesus give you his peace.
We have a text in St. Luke's Gospel, Chapter 8, concerning the mother of Jesus.
And it's no small text, nothing that refers directly to the Blessed Mother is of small account,
because the revelation concerning Mother Mary has much to do with the revelation of who Jesus is.
Of course, the two are indissociable, both historically with the divinity of Jesus being very, very much tied up with the proclamation of Our Lady as Mother of God, Theotokos.
So, too, in our day as well.
So, for a full understanding of Our Lord as Redeemer, we also will continue to explore, explore, explore Our Lady as co-redemptrix.
And that is to say, as one who is beside Our Lord in a very singular way in his act of redemption on the cross.
So, this text, there's some very, very interesting things about it, both the language and also how the language is used.
And so, here it is.
The first thing that we note is that there is a shift in the verb.
It's not only the mother, but also his brethren, which are taken to be his cousins, his biological cousins.
And, but the verb itself is singular.
And the verb itself isn't just a regular coming to.
It's actually a becoming, or sometimes translated as an approach.
Or drawing near.
But really kind of like a becoming into existence, near to.
And that's significant.
It's actually only in the singular.
So, it only refers to one.
And the nouns that follow are both the mother, which is the singular noun, of course, and also the brethren, which is a plural noun.
So, it can't refer to all of them.
But it does refer to one of them.
And it refers most directly to the mother, who has, a lot like the wedding feast of Cana,
she's already there, she has already approached Jesus, because of the singular grace of her Immaculate Conception.
I know that's kind of, if our Protestant brethren would hear such a thing, that's kind of importing a lot that's not right in the text.
But nevertheless, that's the reason why, for this very singular, well, the singular use of the verb here, in this third person singular.
And the other verbs are also indicative as well.
But, just with that.
We notice that they're standing outside.
What does that actually mean in Sacred Scripture, if we try to confine ourselves to this standing outside?
Well, also in St. Luke's Gospel, it's used, how we think it might be used, with kind of being excluded from, right?
And St. Louis de Montfort will talk about how, in Sacred Scripture, our Lord does favor Our Lady's humility.
It's the first movement of her heart to be hidden from the eyes of men.
And also from her spirit.
Then, she said,
So that the glory of Jesus may be fully magnified.
Right?
My soul magnifies the Lord.
And here it is, also in St. Luke's Gospel, when the door is closed, you yourself will stand outside, knocking, saying,
Open the door for us.
That door is a door of faith.
And here, that door is not closed.
The first reading, just so we have kind of a proper context, which the liturgy provides us, is about rebuilding the house of God.
And the house of God is the temple.
And that temple in St. John's Gospel is 46 years in the building.
And also in St. John's Gospel, John 3, or John 2, it's the temple of his body.
His body, his physical body.
And that, of course, Mother Mary gave to him.
And so the 46 years, even in the construction of the temple, historically would match, more or less, as far as we could tell,
really the beginnings of Mother Mary's earthly existence.
Jesus, probably about 30 years old.
Mother Mary, perhaps about the age of 16, when she conceived the Christ.
I'm sorry, yeah, when she conceived the Christ.
And consequently, that giving a rough estimate about the construction, the beginning, the very groundbreaking of the temple,
which is the Immaculate Conception, which is her Immaculate Flesh.
So also in this building up of the church, which is really what's going on here,
who are my mother and mother?
My brethren.
In other words, at the level of grace, in the supernatural level, not in the natural level,
which you're presenting to me, the one who had reported this to him, what's going on.
But those that hear the Word of God and do it.
And Mother Mary, as we should know, Sacred Scripture is all about hearing the Word of God.
And she hears the words of God in three modes.
Luke 219 and Luke 251.
And she keeps together.
The words of God.
And she draws them together.
And she casts them together.
Pondering them in her heart.
And the casting together is making these associations of what it all means.
The Old Testament in light of the very New Testament unfolding before her very eyes in the person of her son.
And lastly, in Luke 251, she keeps the words of God in faith.
Keeping them through in some darkness.
Not understanding, you know, how is it that you are looking for me?
Don't you know I have to be about my father's business in my father's house?
And not understanding those words and still keeping in faith.
So she's all about hearing the words of God and pondering them.
And she's also all about, we could say, her last testament in Sacred Scripture is about doing the words of God.
Do whatever he tells you.
The same verb that we have here.
The ones that hear the words of God and do them.
And that's important because...
Of course, the church, of course, is an exterior reality with a hierarchical structure.
A political body.
The mystical body of Christ.
And also, of course, it's an interior reality as well.
What we learn in St. John's Gospel, Chapter 19, at the very nexus of the Constitution of the Church.
With Jesus' sacrifice on the cross.
Is that there's another standing.
And in the synoptic account...
In the synoptic accounts of the standings, sometimes the women are standing afar off, and sometimes they're standing close.
In the St. John's Gospel, they're standing for women, and the mother of Jesus is the first in the list.
And that's kind of important because that word standing in Sacred Scripture, first off, in the associations of the book of Genesis,
is about establishing, same word, different translation, standing a covenant.
Standing a covenant.
And...
The old covenant was stood, was established, by means of a mediator.
And this is what Moses says to the people.
He says,
And I stood between the Lord and you in that time to announce to you the sayings of the Lord.
For you were in fear from before the fire, and you did not ascend into the mountain.
But I did.
Moses.
And so, in this account, we have the mother of Jesus and the brethren.
There is a standing between, even grammatically.
And also in St. John's Gospel, at the cross, there's a standing between, between the mother of Jesus and the mother's sister and Mary of Clopas and Mary of Magdalene.
And that's important to understand why.
Because there's a covenant being forged.
You say, well, there's only one mediator between God and man, and his name is Jesus Christ.
That's Scripture.
That's right.
How do we understand that?
He is God, man.
We must be in him.
How?
We must be in him.
We must be in him spiritually through baptism and physically through the Holy Eucharist.
So that we can be raised up on the last day.
How do we approach his sacred humanity, which is divine?
How did we receive his sacred humanity, which is divine?
Through Mary.
The standing of Mother Mary at the cross is reflected in this microcosm of what's going on here.
A forge in the covenant.
These men, his brethren, his cousins, couldn't hear the word of God, nor could they observe it without the intercession.
Without the standing between of Our Lady, who is the Mediatrix of all graces.
And she'll get them to him.
And that's what happens in the church.
That's what happens in the church.
She's the virgin-made church.
And that's mission.
And so in Luke 8, we see a mission of the Immaculate Virgin Mary.
That those that are not his people become his people, but not without her.
And the grammar points to it.
Even in St. John's Gospel.
Just real quick.
The standing.
There's four women standing.
And that's in the plural.
That verb's in the plural.
And then when it shifts to the mother standing with the disciple whom he loved.
There's two people there.
But that verb's in the singular.
One of them standing.
Or they're both standing very much together.
And that's true.
Because there's a communion there that wasn't there before.
Behold your son.
Behold your mother.
And so the inspired word of God points to the reality of.
The glory of the mother of Jesus.
So we continue to rely on her intercession.
Both for hearing the words of God more acutely.
And more ardently.
So that we can do the holy will of God.
Amen.
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