Parents Provide Promise

The parents of Mary, Mother of Jesus, are celebrated today in the liturgy for which the texts in the Roman CatholicLectionary are chosen. The texts today for Canada are different from those in the United States about which Friar Jude Winkler has prepared his reflection. Honouring our parents is a way of following the Will of God. This is a command of the Law which is in the Ten Commandments. It is a deep cultural component of life for many people of the earth. We are genetically tied to our parents. We learn how to live in family and community from our parents. The life of Mary prior to her ``Yes`` to God, which is the Incarnation, was under the guidance of Saint Anne and Saint Joachim. The learning of parenthood is grounded in our experience of parenting from our family. The life of Jesus until He began His Public Ministry was in the family of Mary and Joseph. The promise to David for which the psalmist praises God today would be fulfilled by Jesus. The action of Jesus described by Matthew, to an audience with a Jewish culture, in Chapter 13 of his Gospel, presents a teacher who uses parables to bring deep truths about God to people who come to learn from Him. This image of Jesus fits the action of the rabbi who taught Jewish students in His time. The development of a rabbi inJesus time was a process which according to some scholars was most devotedly followed in Galilee. The establishment of the Holy Family in Nazareth exposed them to an environment which it is argued was quite different than the world of the Jews in Jerusalem and Judah. In this community, the skills of being mother which Mary brought from her home, the ancestry of Joseph which called for faith in the Promise to David and an environment which encouraged the development of people prepared as rabbi would form the humanity of Jesus. The text from Matthew has Jesus celebrate the insight which those who are His disciples have through His Life and the Holy Spirit into His Mission to fulfill the Promise.