Who hears the word of God & observes it?
'My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and act on it'
While he was speaking, a woman from the crowd called out and said to him, “Blessed is the womb that carried you and the breasts at which you nursed.” He replied, “Rather, blessed are those who hear the word of God and observe it.” (Luke 11:27-28)
I had not seen Mary’s connection in the above verses from Luke 11:27 as a continuation from Luke 8:21 when I searched through the Protestant commentary1 looking for their explanation of this text. After reading how Catholics put too much effort into venerating Mary—“See,” the commentators insisted, “Jesus is putting Mary in her place!”—I looked to the Catholic interpretation.23
Image by Dimitris Vetsikas
My Catholic search found a bridge back to Luke 8 had tied with this one. Not all non-Catholic commentators mention it, preferring instead to consider Jesus’ comments as a rebuke to Mary.4
Then [Jesus] mother and his brothers came to him but were unable to join him because of the crowd. [Jesus] was told, “Your mother and your brothers are standing outside and they wish to see you.” He said to them in reply, “My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and act on it.” (Luke 8:19-21)
“My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and act on it” precedes Jesus’ response to the woman in the crowd who praises his mother. “Rather, blessed are those who hear the word of God and observe it.”
After establishing that his family solemnly hears the word of God and observes it, Jesus calls them blessed. By the way, the bookends of these scriptures attend to Jesus’ capacity and divine ability to cast out demons. This conversation is not an opportunity to ward off future generations from venerations of his mother. Questioners consider that Jesus cannot be the son of God but must be a collaborator of Satan.5 Not so, Jesus explains. The Kingdom of God, rather than the strain of burdens and ineffective legal religion, is what Jesus offers as a blessing. Satan wants nothing to do with Jesus. The Pharisee’s claim makes no sense.
The subsequent claim over the next two millennia, by those stuck in a protest against Catholic tradition, is that we go too far on Mary. Rather, this is not what Catholic theologians and laity who venerate Mary do. The worried commentators, who wring their hands over allowing an interactive relationship with the saints, and the Holy Spirit’s anointing of a human Church organization (see Pentecost, for goodness sake), are those who go too far.6
It’s a complex and sad journey of scriptural tongue-lashing, a disgust regarding our Catholic understanding of Mary, the Mother of God. I say tongue-lashing because the sola scriptura interpretation (relying, with grave limitations, only upon the scriptures) holds up a few texts of Marian “correction,” especially Luke 11:27, to condemn Catholics for accepting our litany of Marian doctrines.7 They do so without crediting the many scriptures on Mary that support the doctrines.8
It is possible to fight back with scripture, but this approach leaves aside the full revelatory power of what the Holy Spirit provides our Church. The fretful deconstruction of Catholic doctrine eliminates the very tool that sola scriptura Christians use themselves—their tradition. Their tradition assumes authority, too. They remove the power of saints to pray for us and to intercede for us, especially the sainted Mother of God.
How did they come to this conclusion? They did so with authority they believed was given to them by the Holy Spirit. At issue, then, is the validity of authorities. Who relies better upon the apostolic tradition?9 The Church's Fathers, the history and documents of Church councils, and an accepted and ancient list of Doctors of the Church? Or, a disconnected set of sects who claim variant forms of apostolic sourcing and unclear alliances with 1500 years of early tradition.
Image by Andrea Tóth
Like the haggling over which books to accept in the Canon of Old and New Testaments, the Church argues, moans, and decrees over centuries, clarifying its earlier decisions as the Holy Spirit hones the sword the Church wields.
The Holy Spirit provides a dual-sided sword of revelation in both scripture and tradition. The schismatic and cult-like breaks of Christianity remain both scriptural and traditional. It’s endemic to authentic religion.10
It’s this authority link that Jesus will use to unite us all at the end of days.
The early Church had only the Hebraic and Greek testaments of the Jewish traditions. It took well over 300 years for the Church to list a Canon of New Testament books and letters. Not that the letters weren’t valid until then. The Church formally adopted the Canon, which was already in use. That use and tradition of holiness, the stewarded hold on what could be codified sacred scripture, remains the charge of the Church under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
The Church needed to eliminate many books and letters from the sacred list to preserve the originality and source as inspired by the Holy Spirit. The struggle to identify truth, doctrine, and dogma takes years.11
The apostles and early leaders of the Church provided the documentation and teaching on the doctrines about Mary over the next two thousand years. While the testaments are sacrosanct and fixed in place, as it were, the integrity, protection, and translation of those texts had to be stewarded by those ordained to do so under the perpetual guidance of the Holy Spirit.12
Jesus said later in Chapter 11 that we can tell whom we should be listening to by describing how we should act.
“No one who lights a lamp hides it away or places it [under a bushel basket], but on a lampstand so that those who enter might see the light. The lamp of the body is your eye. When your eye is sound, then your whole body is filled with light, but when it is bad, then your body is in darkness. Take care, then, that the light in you not become darkness. If your whole body is full of light, and no part of it is in darkness, then it will be as full of light as a lamp illuminating you with its brightness.” (Luke11:34-36)
THE NEW AMERICAN COMMENTARY: The second saying (11:27–28) is a parallel to 8:19–21, where a reference to Jesus’ mother and brothers occasions a similar teaching that physical relationship is less important than hearing and obeying God’s word. Luke did not write this saying in response to a later veneration of Mary. For him Mary was blessed among women (1:42, 45). Yet she was blessed not because she bore the Son of God but because she believed God’s word (1:45; 11:28). She was blessed just as all who hear and keep God’s word are blessed (11:28; 8:21).
Stein, R. H. (1992). Luke (Vol. 24, p. 334). Broadman & Holman Publishers.
28. blessed rather are those who hear: This ninth macarism corrects the earlier one along the lines of Elizabeth’s blessing of Mary for believing what was spoken to her by the Lord (1:45). For the “word of God” as the content of Jesus’ preaching, see 8:11, and for “hearing the word and keeping it,” see esp. 8:21: “my mother and brothers are those who hear the word of God and keep it.”
Johnson, L. T. (1991). The Gospel of Luke (D. J. Harrington, Ed.; Vol. 3, p. 185). The Liturgical Press.
In the context of Mt and Mk the Mother and brethren of Jesus are here brought in (earlier in Lk 8:19–21). This suggests that our Lady’s appearance may have inspired the good woman’s words of admiration at the victory of our Lord over his enemies: ‘Happy mother’, she cries, ‘that bore such a son’. The reply of 28 is the same in effect as that in 8:21; Jesus does not deny the woman’s affirmation, but he declares that exact fidelity to the will of God (of which he knew better than anyone Mary was so outstanding an example) is cause for greater happiness.
Ginns, R. (1953). The Gospel of Jesus Christ according to St Luke. In B. Orchard & E. F. Sutcliffe (Eds.), A Catholic Commentary on Holy Scripture (p. 955). Thomas Nelson.
Opening up Luke’s Gospel, Gavin Childres (2006). Opening up Luke’s Gospel (p. 1). Day One Publications.For many people, Mary the mother of Jesus towers above the rest of humanity, and is worthy of the utmost reverence. Here Jesus dealt such a view a decisive blow. A woman spoke words which many devout people might utter today: ‘Blessed is the womb that bore you …’ Jesus refused to accept idle praise—if a viewpoint was unhelpful, however well meaning it might be, he rebuked it.
His reply teaches us that we must beware of putting Mary on a pedestal. Holiness is a virtue accessible to all that follow him. You and I can make the choice to serve God in holiness, or to obey our sinful nature. Virtue is not the prerogative of a canonized handful of followers.
Childress, G. (2006). Opening up Luke’s Gospel (p. 107). Day One Publications.
Bede, Venerable, Presbyter and Monk of Yarrow, A.D. 700: But if the flesh of the Word of God, who was born according to the flesh, is declared alien to the flesh of His Virgin Mother, what cause is there why the womb which bare Him and the paps which gave Him suck are pronounced blessed? By what reasoning do they suppose Him to be nourished by her milk, from whose seed they deny Him to be conceived? Whereas according to the physicians, from one and the same fountain both streams are proved to flow. But the woman pronounces blessed not only her who was thought worthy to give birth from her body to the Word of God, but those also who have desired by the hearing of faith spiritually to conceive
Thomas Aquinas. (1843). Catena Aurea: Commentary on the Four Gospels, Collected out of the Works of the Fathers: St. Luke (J. H. Newman, Ed.; Vol. 3, p. 409). John Henry Parker.
John Chrysostom, Abp. of Constantinople, A.D.398.(Hom. 44. in Matt.): In this answer He sought not to disown His mother, but to shew that His birth would have profited her nothing, had she not been really fruitful in works and faith. But if it profited Mary nothing that Christ derived His birth from her, without the inward virtue of her heart, much less will it avail us to have a virtuous father, brother, or son, while we ourselves are strangers to virtue.
Thomas Aquinas. (1843). Catena Aurea: Commentary on the Four Gospels, Collected out of the Works of the Fathers: St. Luke (J. H. Newman, Ed.; Vol. 3, p. 409). John Henry Parker.
New Dictionary of Theology: Historical and Systematic: Protestants as a whole reject these doctrines. While the virgin birth is scriptural and while theotokos can be seen as an affirmation of the biblical doctrine of the incarnation, the other Marian doctrines are seen as a classic example of the bad development of doctrine, of the way in which unscriptural if not pagan devotional practices can become dogmas. They can be seen as a striking proof of the need to test all doctrine by *Scripture and of the dangers of making ecclesiastical tradition infallible.
Lane, A. N. S. (2016). Mary. In M. Davie, T. Grass, S. R. Holmes, J. McDowell, & T. A. Noble (Eds.), New Dictionary of Theology: Historical and Systematic (Second Edition, p. 556). Inter-Varsity Press; InterVarsity Press.
Tim Perry on Daniel Kendall, SJ: So I have learned to submit myself again to the witness of the Scriptures, which according to my own church tradition contain all things needful for salvation, only to find that they say much more about the Blessed Mother of God than I possibly could have imagined.
Perry, T., & Kendall, D. (2013). The Blessed Virgin Mary (A. G. Padgett, D. A. S. Fergusson, I. R. Torrance, & D. Nussberger, Eds.; p. 97). William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.
2 Peter 1:12–15 Last will and testament: Our author uses this convention to give us the definitive word about the church’s eschatological tradition. He consciously intends to set down for all time the authentic memory of the promises and prophecies which he alluded to earlier (see 1:4, 11). But before he can do this, he needs to attend to a pressing problem — his reliability to give authentic heavenly teaching.
Bergant, D., & Karris, R. J. (1989). The Collegeville Bible commentary: based on the New American Bible with revised New Testament (p. 1236). Liturgical Press.
Heresy, Schism and Apostasy - Definitions - by Colin B. Donovan, STL: Thus, the person who is objectively in heresy is not formally guilty of heresy if 1) their ignorance of the truth is due to their upbringing in a particular religious tradition (to which they may even be scrupulously faithful), and 2) they are not morally responsible for their ignorance of the truth. This is the principle of invincible ignorance, which Catholic theology has always recognized as excusing before God. (This item 3444 digitally provided courtesy of CatholicCulture.org)
The Nicæa council (325) was always held in the highest repute throughout the West, where its canons were in vigour together with those of Sardica, the complement of the anti-Arian legislation of Nicæa, and whose decrees had been drawn up originally in both Latin and Greek. The canons of the two councils were numbered in running order, as though they were the work of but one council (a trait met with in divers Latin collections), which explains why the Council of Sardica is sometimes called œcumenical by earlier writers, and its canons attributed to the Council of Nicæa.
Besson, J. (1907–1913). Collections of Ancient Canons. In C. G. Herbermann, E. A. Pace, C. B. Pallen, T. J. Shahan, & J. J. Wynne (Eds.), The Catholic Encyclopedia: An International Work of Reference on the Constitution, Doctrine, Discipline, and History of the Catholic Church: Vols. I–XV. The Encyclopedia Press; The Universal Knowledge Foundation.
Munificentissimus Deus (Most Munificent God): Papal bull of Pius XII promulgated in the Marian Year of 1950 defining the dogma of Mary’s assumption body and soul into heaven upon her death. Considered to be the second and most recent example of a papal pronouncement given in an ex cathedra format that explicitly invoked infallibility. See also Ineffabilis Deus.
Bretzke, J. T. (1998). In Consecrated phrases: a Latin theological dictionary: Latin expressions commonly found in theological writings (electronic ed.). Liturgical Press.