Overwork Mission Family, unbalanced

(Mk 3:20-21)

"And he came into the house; and again the crowd gathered together, so that they could not even eat bread. And when they had heard, his [those around him] went out to get him, because they said, He is beside himself".

Today's short Gospel can be interpreted on different levels: let us begin with a vocational approach.

The family is the nucleus of society of all times, but Christ and the believer know that it should not constitute a cage.

Rather, it should be a springboard towards the adventure of Faith, which solicits other bonds.

Life in the Spirit activates us for the building of the Hundredfold, in the great ecclesial and human family.

The kinsmen may be dismayed by our desire to give ourselves entirely to God in the brothers.

Faced with exhausting activity they become apprehensive, because we are always going against the grain... so close relatives worry about our health, or the honour of home.

Sometimes, affections and natural ties can impede the fulfilment of the Mission to which we are called.

Of course, when those who do not understand are precisely those from whom one expects the most help, the suffering becomes great.

Sometimes, even important commitments in the work of the Church remain half-hearted or completely frustrated - due to affections and impediments that we are unable to cut off.

Let us come to the historical level.

Jesus had good problems at home too, but the Gospel passage refers to the nascent Church in Peter's dwelling in Capernaum.

A more instinctive and less 'qualified' reality, but very close to the traditional house of prayer [synagogue] of the place, located on the same small road perpendicular to the lake, just a little higher up.

In the course of time, the two almost adjacent realities faced each other bitterly in theology - even to the point of competing architecturally, as archaeologists well know.

The more 'noble' and ancient of the two accused the other of being an uprooted - hence unacceptable, eccentric to the sacred identity customs of the chosen people.

Yet in Peter's dwelling at a certain point the number of those from Judaism explodes, as well as pagans who convert to the Lord's proposal.

Thus the first community of believers in the Lord begins to be perhaps more substantial than the assembly in the Synagogue, just a few steps away.

The very people and religious culture that generated Christ [his "Family"] struggled to question themselves. And the first reaction is one of rejection.

That portion of the Jewish lineage that recognised Jesus as the Messiah seemed to want to go its own way.

Social aspect:

Indeed, the hearth and clan proper were alarmed, because the adult Jesus did not behave submissively.

He compromised the name of his household, spent energy on others - to the point of exhaustion... absurdly in favour of outsiders, perhaps 'enemies' of the Jewish nation.

So the relatives decided to bring him back by force (vv.31-35) considering him an unbalanced person who was wearing out the internal relations and the relations of the entire dynasty with the authorities in the land.

But we know that by extending the bond of 'blood' to those who would listen, Jesus did not allow external evaluations to remove him from his task.

Let us see what the situation was.

In ancient Israel, the sense of community and the clan formed the basis of coexistence. The goal of the Law was: "There shall be no needy among you" (Deut 15:4).

And like the great prophets, Christ and his intimates attempted to strengthen the sense of sharing, returning to the deep spirit of what were once articulations of coexistence.

Precisely: clan, hearth, community - expressions of God's love manifesting itself.

The 'big family' ensured protection for particular families and the less well-off.

It was a guarantee of land ownership; hence it gave a sense of freedom - and was a vehicle for the possibility of adhering to one's own tradition.

Besides cultural defence, it was in community life that the people of that era expressed the spirit of concrete solidarity.

For Christ, too, defending the clan, its spiritual baggage, its fraternal action ... was to defend the Covenant itself.

But the House of Peter [the nascent Church] was beginning to overtake all the ancient reality.

The convictions now crystallised in the Synagogue, as well as the theological and benevolent bearing of all its compromise truth - no longer seemed viable. Why?

The imperial system implanted in Galilee had debilitated the sense of broad and minute communion, indeed of clan and hearth.

Herod the Great - who died in Jericho in 4 BC. - and his son Herod Antipas (37BC-39AD) had brought families to such a crisis level that they had to fend for themselves and shut themselves away from the most pressing needs. 

The taxes to be paid to the government and the temple were increasingly exorbitant, which accentuated indebtedness.

Here and there the Hellenistic mentality crept in with traits of individualism previously unknown to the Semitic mentality.

The imposed duty of receiving soldiers and giving them hospitality in homes where they did what they wanted even on women, and the frequent threats of violent repression, forced people to deal with problems of survival.

All this led to closure, to retreating to one's immediate needs.

There was less and less practice of hospitality, the sharing of goods, the canteen, and the asylum of the marginalised. Expressions of fraternity and care in which the early Christians were already champions.

In this way, closures were reinforced by the religiosity of the time.

The ever-increasing observance of purity rules was a factor of serious social and cultural marginalisation.

Entire sections of the population were being excluded from their relationship with God: precisely those most in need of hope and a face.

Instead of fostering acceptance and sharing, devout norms even favoured separations and exclusions [in particular: all women, children, foreigners, the sick or the handicapped...].

Political, economic and social structure, and sacred ideology, conspired to weaken the core values of the spirit, and the practice of sharing.

In today's Gospel passage, we see precisely how the narrow limits of the nuclear family came into conflict with the new Rabbi's proposal: to recover the unitive afflatus, both in a broad and detailed sense.

In short, it was in the House of Peter that the small family acquired breath, opening up not only to the Nation, but to the wider Family of the Human Community.

An integral assembly, even of women and the shaky, or uncertain and distant.

An absolutely new reality, no longer gathered for worship but unable to coexist.