Luke 8:20

Our Lord had left His kinsfolk according to the flesh, and was occupied in His Father’s teaching. But when they began to feel His absence, they came to Him, as it is said, Then came to him his mother and his brethren. When you hear of our Lord’s brethren you must include also the notions of piety and grace. For no one in regard of His divine nature is the brother of the Savior, (for He is the Only-begotten,) but He has, by the grace of piety, made us partakers in His flesh and His blood, and He who is by nature God has become our brother.

But those who are said to be our Lord’s brethren according to the flesh, you must not imagine to be the children of the blessed Mary, the mother of God, as Helvidius thinks, nor the children of Joseph by another wife, as some say, but rather believe to be their kinsfolk.

His brethren thought that when He heard of their presence He would send away the people, from respect to His mother’s name, and from His affection towards her, as it follows, And it was told him, Your mother and your brethren stand without.

Think what it was, when the whole people stood by, and were hanging upon His mouth, (for His teaching had already begun,) to withdraw Him away from them. Our Lord accordingly answers as it were rebuking them, as it follows, And he answered and said to them, My mother and my brethren are they which hear the word of God, and do it, &c.

The moral teacher who gives himself an example to others, when about to enjoin upon others, that he who has not left father and mother, is not worthy of the Son of God, first submits Himself to this precept, not that He denies the claims of filial piety, (for it is His own sentence, He that knows not his father and mother shall die the death,) but because He knows that He is more bound to obey His Father’s mysteries than the feelings of His mother. Nor however are His parents harshly rejected, but the bonds of the mind are shown to be more sacred than those of the body. Therefore in this place He does not disown His mother, (as some heretics say, eagerly catching at His speech,) since she is also acknowledged from the cross; but the law of heavenly ordinances is preferred to earthly affection.

They then who hear the word of God and do it, are called the mother of our Lord, because they daily in their actions or words bring Him forth as it were in their inmost hearts; they also are His brethren where they do the will of His Father, Who is in heaven.

Now He does not say this by way of reproof to His mother, but to greatly assist her, for if He was anxious for others to beget in them a just opinion of Himself, much more was He for His mother. And He had not raised her to such a height if she were always to expect to be honored by Him as a son, and never to consider Him as her Lord.

But some take this to mean that certain men, hating Christ’s teaching, and mocking at Him for His doctrine, said, Your mother and your brethren stand without wishing to see you; as if thereby to show His meanness of birth. And He therefore knowing their hearts gave them this answer, that meanness of birth harms not, but if a man, though of low birth, hear the word of God, He reckons him as His kinsman. Because however hearing only saves no one, but rather condemns, He adds, and does it; for it becomes us both to hear and to do. But by the word of God He means His own teaching. for all the words which He Himself spoke were from His Father.

In a mystical sense he ought not to stand without who was seeking Christ. Hence also that saying, Come to him, and be enlightened. For if they stand without, not even parents themselves are acknowledged; and perhaps for our example they are not. How are we acknowledged by Him if we stand without? That meaning also is not unreasonable, because by the figure of parents He points to the Jews of whom Christ was born, and thought the Church to be preferred to the synagogue.

For they cannot enter within when He is teaching whose words they refuse to understand spiritually. But the multitude went before and entered into the house, because when the Jews rejected Christ the Gentiles flocked to Him. But those who stand without, wishing to see Christ, are they, who not seeking a spiritual sense in the law, have placed themselves without to guard the letter of it, and as it were rather compel Christ to go out, to teach them earthly things, than consent to enter in themselves to learn spiritual things.

All these illusions of an imaginary corpo reity in (his) Christ, Marcion adopted with this view, that his nativity also might not be furnished with any evidence from his human substance, and that thus the Christ of the Creator might be free to have assigned to Him all predictions which treated of Him as one capable of human birth, and therefore fleshly. But most foolishly did our Pontic heresiarch act in this too. As if it would not be more readily believed that flesh in the Divine Being should rather be unborn than untrue, this belief having in fact had the way mainly prepared for it by the Creator’s angels when they conversed in flesh which was real, although unborn. …

But whenever a dispute arises about the nativity, all who reject it as creating a presumption in favour of the reality of Christ’s flesh, wilfully deny that God Himself was born, on the ground that He asked, “Who is my mother, and who are my brethren?” Let, therefore, Apelles hear what was our answer to Marcion in that little work, in which we challenged his own (favourite) gospel to the proof, even that the material circumstances of that remark (of the Lord’s) should be considered. …