“Is he not the carpenter, Mary’s son? Where did he get all this?

Mark 6:1-6

When Pope John Paul — now St. John Paul — was pope, he recommended we pray the Rosary as a “School of Mary,” for in the rosary Mary teaches us the mysteries of Jesus, her Son. The pope recommended other mysteries besides the Joyful, Sorrowful and Glorious Mysteries, namely,  the Luminous Mysteries taken from the scriptures describing Jesus’ ministry––  the baptism of Jesus, the marriage feast of Cana, the transfiguration of Jesus, his preaching, the Last Supper. Mary helps us understand what these mysteries mean.

Besides the Luminous mysteries, are there other gospel stories where Mary can teach us?  One of them would have to be the story of Jesus’ visit to Nazareth, read in Mark’s gospel last week in our lectionary.

Mark and the evangelists Matthew and Luke say that Jesus after his baptism in the Jordan went back to Nazareth and was rejected by those who knew him from childhood. 

“Is he not the carpenter, Mary’s son?  Where did he get all this?”  Earlier, Mark’s gospel says that his family came down from Nazareth to Capernaum where he was teaching and healing people to take him home because they thought he was out of his mind.

Over and over the gospels tell us something we wouldn’t expect: that Jesus was rejected in places where he did so much good. The religious leaders reject him almost immediately as he begins his ministry in the towns along the Sea of Galilee. The towns themselves where he healed and taught reject him after he did so much for them. 

 Mark’s gospel describes Jesus’ return to Nazareth after he raised a little girl from the dead in Capernaum.The girl’s father, Jairus, was an official in the synagogue at Capernaum, a significant witness to what had happened. “He’s the carpenter. We know Mary his mother”, they say In Nazareth. Jesus is rejected in his hometown, by his own family, a rejection he must have felt deeply. 

The gospels emphasize the rejection of Jesus. What about the rejection of Mary, his mother? In our recent feast of the Presentation of Jesus in the temple, the old man Simeon takes the infant Jesus in his arms and says he is a light come into the world. Then, he turns to Mary, his mother, and tells her a sword will pierce her heart. 

We think of the sword that pierced her heart as she stood at the cross of her Son, but let’s not forget the sword that pierced Mary’s heart at Nazareth, the sword she felt when her neighbors, the people all around her, her own family, rejected her Son. Mary spent the days of her Son’s ministry in Galilee in this place where he was not welcome. 

Some women followed Jesus during his ministry, the gospels say, but Mary wasn’t among them. She only saw one miracle of Jesus, at Cana in Galilee, his “time had not come.”he told her. She  never saw him work the many miracles he worked in the towns along the Sea of Galilee. She never heard him teach when his time came. She was never in the crowds that flocked around him. She was in Nazareth where they didn’t think much of him. 

Only when he went up to Jerusalem did Mary join the women of Galilee who accompanied him. Then, she took part in his last days when he was arrested and condemned and crucified. She stood beneath his cross where the sword of sorrow pierced her heart. 

I suppose we can say Nazareth. like Calvary, was Mary’s school of faith. Like Calvary, Nazareth was a place she learned to believe and not see. Nazareth and Calvary were schools of faith for her. “Blessed are they who have not seen, but believe.” 

I think one of Mary’s tasks in our church –– a task more important than ever now–– is to help us to believe even when we do not see, because our world today is like Nazareth, a world believing less and less. 

In the great apparitions of Mary at Lourdes and Fatima, for example, she came to help people, like Bernadette and the little children of Portugal, whose faith was shaken by the unbelief of their time, to believe.  

This is why we honor Mary. We remember her on Saturday, the day following Friday, the day we honor the Passion of her Son. She helps us to believe.

 “O Lady Mary, thy bright crown is no mere crown of majesty, for with the reflex of his own resplendent thorns, Christ circled thee.”  ( Francis Thompson)