Overwork Mission Family, by unbalanced
(Mk 3:20-21)
Today’s short Gospel can be interpreted according to different reading plans: let’s start with a vocational approach.
The family core of society should also be a springboard to the adventure of Faith that urges other bonds.
The kinsmen can be dismayed by our desire to give ourselves entirely to God in sisters and brothers in a wider sense.
And sometimes the affections and natural constraints can prevent the fulfilment of the Mission to which we are called.
Sometimes, even important commitments in the Church’s action remain half or completely frustrated - due to a “fondness” and impediments that we are unable to ‘cut’.
Now we come to the historical level:
Jesus also had serious problems in his “house”, but the Gospel passage refers to the nascent Church in Peter’s dwelling in Capernaum, very close to the Synagogue.
Over time, the two almost adjacent realities found themselves fiercely facing each other.
Yet in the Abode of Peter at one point the number of those from Judaism, as well as pagans, who converted to the Lord's proposal exploded.
The People themselves and the religious culture that generated Christ [his «Family»] had difficulty questioning themselves. And the first reaction was rejection.
That new portion of the Jewish lineage that recognized Jesus Messiah seemed to want to do more and more of its own.
Social aspect:
Indeed, the hearth and its own clan had become alarmed, because adult Jesus did not follow a submissive behavior.
So the relatives decided to bring him back by force (cf. vv.31-35) considering him an unbalanced who wore out their internal and with authorities on the territory relations.
But the beliefs now crystallized in the Synagogue - as well as the theological and ‘cordial’ heritage of all its compromise reality - no longer seemed viable. Why?
The imperial system implanted in Galilee had weakened the sense of sharing and fraternity. Closures strengthened by the religiosity of the time.
The increasing observance of purity standards was a factor of serious social and cultural marginalization.
Entire sections of the population were excluded from the relationship with God: precisely those most in need of hope, and of a lovable ‘face’.
Instead of promoting acceptance and participation, the devoted rules even favoured separations and exclusions.
Political, economic and social structure, and sacred ideology, conspired in favor of weakening the central values of the spirit of communion.
In today’s Gospel passage we note precisely how the narrow limits of the family went to conflict with the proposal of the new Rabbi, to recover the clenchement of solidarity..
In short, it was in the House of Peter that every small family gained breath, opening up itself not only to the nation, but to the wider human Family.
Integral Assembly, even with women and sickly ill persons, or of uncertain and distant.
An absolutely new reality; no longer gathered only for worship but unable of ‘living together’.
[Saturday 2nd wk. in O.T. January 24, 2026]
