from His mouth, and they said: Is not this the son of Joseph? And He said to them: Doubtless you will say to Me this similitude, 'Physician, heal thyself:' as great things as we have heard [that you have] done in Capharnaum, do also here in Thy own country."
This is the same challenge to perform miracles before their eyes, which the Jews made to Him in Jerusalem. The speakers are animated only by a mixture of curiosity and envy. The well-attested miracles performed in their immediate neighborhood, at Cana, as well as in the city of Capharnaum, together with those which heralded His return to Galilee, should have disposed His own townsmen to listen to that "wisdom," and to bow to the authority of Him who challenged their belief in Him, as the Messiah described in Isaias. And then comes the sudden ending of His work in their midst.
" Amen, I say to you, that no prophet is accepted in his own country. In truth I say to you, there were many widows in the days of Elias in Israel, when Heaven was shut up three years and six months, when there was a great famine throughout all the earth. And to none of them was Elias sent, but to Sarepta of Sidon, to a widow woman. And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of Eliseus the prophet; and none of them was cleansed but Naaman the Syrian. And all they in the synagogue, hearing these things, were filled with anger. And they rose up and thrust Him out of the city; and they brought Him to the brow of the hill whereon their city was built, that they might cast Him down headlong. But He, passing through the midst of them, went His way." (S. Luke iv.)
The Blessed Mother was a witness of all this scene. Need we describe her agony of apprehension, while the blind and sacrilegious crowd dragged their Messiah to the cruel death they wished to inflict? or her grief at seeing her own people rejecting the Saviour, and closing to themselves every road to salvation?
From Nazareth our Lord directed His steps to Capharnaum, where His Mother and His disciples soon joined Him. There He recruited His apostles, Mary, meanwhile, finding a velcome in the family of her "sister" or near kinswoman, Mary the wife of Zebedee, whose two sons, James and John, attached themselves to our Lord.
How far Christ permitted, during His repeated missionary circuits through Galilee and its "hundred cities," His Mother to accompany Him, we cannot say from the Gospel narrative or from tradition. We know that a band of devoted Galilean women ministered to His wants and those of His disciples during the three years of His public life. It would be against all probability to suppose that His Blessed Mother should have had no share in these ministrations.
At any rate, she must have been with Him in Jerusalem during the celebration of the second Pasch, mentioned by S. John (v. 1-47). After this occurred the Sermon on the Mount, the healing of the Centurion's servant, and the resurrection of the widow's son at Naim, as well as Christ's second circuit of Galilee. The hatred of His enemies, the scribes and Pharisees, was becoming daily more open, and more threatening. Rumors circulated of serious peril to the Master's safety. John the Baptist had already been imprisoned by Herod Antipas, brother of Archelaus, and tetrarch of Galilee. So the Blessed Mother, alarmed by these flying rumors, hastened with some of her kinsfolk to the scene of our Lord's preaching. Then happened that incident from which non-Catholic readers of the Gospel draw an inference most injurious to Christ and to His Mother. The multitudes that surrounded Him night and day, and the demands upon His time, were such that He had not even leisure "to eat bread." " And it was told Him: Thy Mother and Thy brethren stand without, desiring to see Thee. Who, answering, said to them. My Mother and My brethren are they who hear the word of God, and do it." We know, by His taking His Mother with Him to Capharnaum, after the Miracle of Cana, and by His appearing in the synagogue at Nazareth, pro claiming Himself the Messiah, without denying that Mary was His Mother — how far it was from the mind of our Lord, by word or act, to deny or to slight His Mother and her relatives. This would not be the act of a dutiful and loving son. But He was on His Messianic work; and He would have all understand, that its freedom and dignity required of all engaged in it to be above the cares and claims of family or relationship; just as elsewhere He says to the young man called to follow Him, and asking to go home and bury his father, "Allow the dead to bury their dead."
It is in the last stage of His mortal career that we shall find His
Mother by His side. She had heard of His utterance about His
approaching death: " Behold we go up to Jerusalem; and all
things shall be accomplished which were written by the prophets
concerning the Son of Man. For He shall be delivered to the
Gentiles, and shall be mocked, and scourged, and spit up)on."
Every mother's heart is prophetic of coming sorrow: how much
more so the Mother to whom Simeon had foretold suffering unutterable, incomprehensible?
She is not mentioned as having been present during His triumphant entry into Jerusalem; although it is most unlikely that she would not, with the pious women from Galilee and His other devoted disciples, have joined Him on His way to the capital on this last visit. But if Mary was anxious to shun the pageants in her Son's honor, she would be present when the hour of humiliation came.
We are never to forget that, in our Lord's Passion, the Godhead personally and inseparably united to our humanity in His Person, eclipsed Itself, as it were, and allowed the Man, as man, to suffer, to expiate, to atone for His brethren of the entire race of Adam. It was only at the supreme moment of desolation and agony that the Son was to be visibly sustained by His Mother. Tradition affirms, and the Church authorizes the tradition, that, on His way to Calvary, He met His Mother, as if she could not be withheld from acknowledging as her own Son, -the Man of Sorrows whom they have been scourging, crowning with thorns, condemning, like the most abominable of criminals, to be crucified between two men, who were thieves and murderers.
During the memorable passage through the Red Sea, Moses had by his side Mary, the Deliverer, his heroic sister, the Mother of her people. When Jesus, the true Moses, was treading the streets of Jerusalem, bearing a portion of, at least. His own cross, when the multitude, athirst for His blood, divided on His way, mocking, deriding, cursing; His Mother, that Mary who is mother to us all, walked by His side, setting her foot firmly in every depth of shame and bitterness to which He had to descend.
And there she stands beneath the Cross on Calvary! "Now there stood by the Cross of Jesus, His Mother and His Mother's sister Mary [wife] of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalen. When Jesus therefore had seen His Mother and the disciples standing, whom He loved, He said to His Mother, Woman, behold thy son. After that He saith to the disciple: Behold thy Mother. And from that hour the disciple took her to his own." Solicitude for her welfare is uppermost in the mind of the Divine Sufferer. Let us read in
