Mary (mother of Jesus)

122:1.1Joseph, the hu­man fa­ther of Je­sus (Joshua ben Joseph), was a He­brew of the He­brews, al­beit he car­ried many non-Jew­ish racial strains which had been added to his an­ces­tral tree from time to time by the fe­male lines of his pro­gen­i­tors. The an­ces­try of the fa­ther of Je­sus went back to the days of Abra­ham and through this ven­er­a­ble pa­tri­arch to the ear­lier lines of in­her­i­tance lead­ing to the Sume­ri­ans and Nod­ites and, through the south­ern tribes of the an­cient blue man, to An­don and Fonta. David and Sol­o­mon were not in the di­rect line of Joseph’s an­ces­try, nei­ther did Joseph’s lin­eage go di­rectly back to Adam. Joseph’s im­me­di­ate an­ces­tors were me­chan­ics—builders, car­pen­ters, ma­sons, and smiths. Joseph him­self was a car­pen­ter and later a con­trac­tor. His fam­ily be­longed to a long and il­lus­tri­ous line of the no­bil­ity of the com­mon peo­ple, ac­cen­tu­ated ever and anon by the ap­pear­ance of un­usual in­di­vid­u­als who had dis­tin­guished them­selves in con­nec­tion with the evo­lu­tion of re­li­gion on Uran­tia.

122:1.2Mary, the earth mother of Je­sus, was a de­scen­dant of a long line of unique an­ces­tors em­brac­ing many of the most re­mark­able women in the racial his­tory of Uran­tia. Al­though Mary was an av­er­age woman of her day and gen­er­a­tion, pos­sess­ing a fairly nor­mal tem­per­a­ment, she reck­oned among her an­ces­tors such well-known women as An­non, Tamar, Ruth, Bathsheba, An­sie, Cloa, Eve, Enta, and Ratta. No Jew­ish woman of that day had a more il­lus­tri­ous lin­eage of com­mon pro­gen­i­tors or one ex­tend­ing back to more aus­pi­cious be­gin­nings. Mary’s an­ces­try, like Joseph’s, was char­ac­ter­ized by the pre­dom­i­nance of strong but av­er­age in­di­vid­u­als, re­lieved now and then by nu­mer­ous out­stand­ing per­son­al­i­ties in the march of civ­i­liza­tion and the pro­gres­sive evo­lu­tion of re­li­gion. Racially con­sid­ered, it is hardly proper to re­gard Mary as a Jew­ess. In cul­ture and be­lief she was a Jew, but in hered­i­tary en­dow­ment she was more a com­pos­ite of Syr­ian, Hit­tite, Phoeni­cian, Greek, and Egyp­tian stocks, her racial in­her­i­tance be­ing more gen­eral than that of Joseph.

122:1.3Of all cou­ples liv­ing in Pales­tine at about the time of Mi­chael’s pro­jected be­stowal, Joseph and Mary pos­sessed the most ideal com­bi­na­tion of wide­spread racial con­nec­tions and su­pe­rior av­er­age of per­son­al­ity en­dow­ments. It was the plan of Mi­chael to ap­pear on earth as an av­er­age man, that the com­mon peo­ple might un­der­stand him and re­ceive him; where­fore Ga­briel se­lected just such per­sons as Joseph and Mary to be­come the be­stowal par­ents.

• Mary (mother of Jesus)

137:6.1Je­sus’ first pub­lic ap­pear­ance fol­low­ing his bap­tism was in the Ca­per­naum syn­a­gogue on Sab­bath, March 2, A.D. 26. The syn­a­gogue was crowded to over­flow­ing. The story of the bap­tism in the Jor­dan was now aug­mented by the fresh news from Cana about the wa­ter and the wine. Je­sus gave seats of honor to his six apos­tles, and seated with them were his broth­ers in the flesh James and Jude. His mother, hav­ing re­turned to Ca­per­naum with James the evening be­fore, was also pres­ent, be­ing seated in the women’s sec­tion of the syn­a­gogue. The en­tire au­di­ence was on edge; they ex­pected to be­hold some ex­traor­di­nary man­i­fes­ta­tion of super­nat­u­ral power which would be a fit­ting tes­ti­mony to the na­ture and au­thor­ity of him who was that day to speak to them. But they were des­tined to dis­ap­point­ment.

• Mary (mother of Jesus)

145:0.1Je­sus and the apos­tles ar­rived in Ca­per­naum the evening of Tues­day, Jan­uary 13. As usual, they made their head­quar­ters at the home of Zeb­e­dee in Beth­saida. Now that John the Bap­tist had been sent to his death, Je­sus pre­pared to launch out in the first open and pub­lic preach­ing tour of Gal­i­lee. The news that Je­sus had re­turned rapidly spread through­out the city, and early the next day, Mary the mother of Je­sus has­tened away, go­ing over to Naz­a­reth to visit her son Joseph.

• Mary (mother of Jesus)

154:5.1May 22 was an event­ful day in the life of Je­sus. On this Sun­day morn­ing, be­fore day­break, one of David’s mes­sen­gers ar­rived in great haste from Tiberias, bring­ing the word that Herod had au­tho­rized, or was about to au­tho­rize, the ar­rest of Je­sus by the of­fi­cers of the San­hedrin. The re­ceipt of the news of this im­pend­ing dan­ger caused David Zeb­e­dee to arouse his mes­sen­gers and send them out to all the lo­cal groups of dis­ci­ples, sum­mon­ing them for an emer­gency coun­cil at seven o’clock that morn­ing. When the sis­ter-in-law of Jude (Je­sus’ brother) heard this alarm­ing re­port, she has­tened word to all of Je­sus’ fam­ily who dwelt near by, sum­mon­ing them forth­with to as­sem­ble at Zeb­e­dee’s house. And in re­sponse to this hasty call, pres­ently there were as­sem­bled Mary, James, Joseph, Jude, and Ruth.

• Mary (mother of Jesus)

188:3.3Mary the mother of Je­sus, with Ruth and Jude, re­turned to Beth­any to join their fam­ily this Sat­ur­day evening just be­fore sun­set. David Zeb­e­dee re­mained at the home of Nicode­mus, where he had ar­ranged for his mes­sen­gers to as­sem­ble early Sun­day morn­ing. The women of Gal­i­lee, who pre­pared spices for the fur­ther em­balm­ing of Je­sus’ body, tar­ried at the home of Joseph of Ari­mathea.

• Mary (mother of Jesus)

192:0.3Dur­ing the week they tar­ried in Je­ru­sa­lem, Mary the mother of Je­sus spent much of the time with the women be­liev­ers who were stop­ping at the home of Joseph of Ari­mathea.

• faith in Jesus steadied by memory of Gabriel’s appearance

122:5.6Had Joseph lived, he un­doubt­edly would have be­come a firm be­liever in the di­vine mis­sion of his el­dest son. Mary al­ter­nated be­tween be­liev­ing and doubt­ing, be­ing greatly in­flu­enced by the po­si­tion taken by her other chil­dren and by her friends and rel­a­tives, but al­ways was she stead­ied in her fi­nal at­ti­tude by the mem­ory of Ga­briel’s ap­pear­ance to her im­me­di­ately af­ter the child was con­ceived.

• convinced Jesus would become temporal Messiah

122:5.10The larger part of Joseph’s fam­ily be­came be­liev­ers in the teach­ings of Je­sus, but very few of Mary’s peo­ple ever be­lieved in him un­til af­ter he de­parted from this world. Joseph leaned more to­ward the spir­i­tual con­cept of the ex­pected Mes­siah, but Mary and her fam­ily, es­pe­cially her fa­ther, held to the idea of the Mes­siah as a tem­po­ral de­liv­erer and po­lit­i­cal ruler. Mary’s an­ces­tors had been promi­nently iden­ti­fied with the Mac­cabean ac­tiv­i­ties of the then but re­cent times.

• held to Hellenic view of Judaism

122:5.11Joseph held vig­or­ously to the East­ern, or Baby­lo­nian, views of the Jew­ish re­li­gion; Mary leaned strongly to­ward the more lib­eral and broader West­ern, or Hel­lenis­tic, in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the law and the proph­ets.

• convinced Jesus would become temporal Messiah

122:8.4The sec­ond day af­ter the birth of Je­sus, Mary sent word to Eliz­a­beth that her child had come and re­ceived word in re­turn invit­ing Joseph up to Je­ru­sa­lem to talk over all their af­fairs with Zach­a­rias. The fol­low­ing week Joseph went to Je­ru­sa­lem to con­fer with Zach­a­rias. Both Zach­a­rias and Eliz­a­beth had be­come pos­sessed with the sin­cere con­vic­tion that Je­sus was in­deed to be­come the Jew­ish de­liv­erer, the Mes­siah, and that their son John was to be his chief of aides, his right-hand man of des­tiny. And since Mary held these same ideas, it was not dif­fi­cult to pre­vail upon Joseph to re­main in Beth­le­hem, the City of David, so that Je­sus might grow up to be­come the suc­ces­sor of David on the throne of all Is­rael. Ac­cord­ingly, they re­mained in Beth­le­hem more than a year, Joseph mean­time work­ing some at his car­pen­ter’s trade.

• faithfully discharged parental responsibilities

123:0.2All through these early years of Je­sus’ help­less in­fancy, Mary main­tained one long and con­stant vigil lest any­thing be­fall her child which might jeop­ar­dize his wel­fare or in any way in­ter­fere with his fu­ture mis­sion on earth; no mother was ever more de­voted to her child. In the home where Je­sus chanced to be there were two other chil­dren about his age, and among the near neigh­bors there were six oth­ers whose ages were suf­fi­ciently near his own to make them ac­cept­able play-fel­lows. At first Mary was dis­posed to keep Je­sus close by her side. She feared some­thing might hap­pen to him if he were al­lowed to play in the gar­den with the other chil­dren, but Joseph, with the as­sis­tance of his kins­folk, was able to con­vince her that such a course would de­prive Je­sus of the help­ful ex­pe­ri­ence of learn­ing how to ad­just him­self to chil­dren of his own age. And Mary, re­al­iz­ing that such a pro­gram of un­due shel­ter­ing and un­usual pro­tec­tion might tend to make him self-con­scious and some­what self-cen­tered, fi­nally gave as­sent to the plan of per­mit­ting the child of prom­ise to grow up just like any other child; and though she was obe­di­ent to this de­ci­sion, she made it her busi­ness al­ways to be on watch while the lit­tle folks were at play about the house or in the gar­den. Only an af­fec­tion­ate mother can know the bur­den that Mary car­ried in her heart for the safety of her son dur­ing these years of his in­fancy and early child­hood.

• convinced Jesus would become temporal Messiah

123:0.5Mary had never fully given up the idea that Je­sus ought to grow up in Beth­le­hem, the City of David. Joseph did not re­ally be­lieve that their son was to be­come a kingly de­liv­erer of Is­rael. Be­sides, he knew that he him­self was not re­ally a de­scen­dant of David; that his be­ing reck­oned among the off­spring of David was due to the adop­tion of one of his an­ces­tors into the Da­vidic line of de­scent. Mary, of course, thought the City of David the most ap­pro­pri­ate place in which the new can­di­date for David’s throne could be reared, but Joseph pre­ferred to take chances with Herod An­tipas rather than with his brother Archelaus. He en­ter­tained great fears for the child’s safety in Beth­le­hem or in any other city in Judea, and sur­mised that Archelaus would be more likely to pur­sue the men­ac­ing poli­cies of his fa­ther, Herod, than would An­tipas in Gal­i­lee. And be­sides all these rea­sons, Joseph was out­spo­ken in his pref­er­ence for Gal­i­lee as a bet­ter place in which to rear and ed­u­cate the child, but it re­quired three weeks to over­come Mary’s ob­jec­tions.

• fairly strict disciplinarian

123:3.9This year Je­sus made great prog­ress in ad­just­ing his strong feel­ings and vig­or­ous im­pulses to the de­mands of fam­ily co-op­er­a­tion and home dis­ci­pline. Mary was a lov­ing mother but a fairly strict dis­ci­plinar­ian. In many ways, how­ever, Joseph ex­erted the greater con­trol over Je­sus as it was his prac­tice to sit down with the boy and fully ex­plain the real and un­der­ly­ing rea­sons for the ne­ces­sity of dis­ci­plinary cur­tail­ment of per­sonal de­sires in def­er­ence to the wel­fare and tran­quil­lity of the en­tire fam­ily. When the sit­u­a­tion had been ex­plained to Je­sus, he was al­ways in­tel­li­gently and will­ingly co-op­er­a­tive with pa­ren­tal wishes and fam­ily reg­u­la­tions.

• overprotective after Jesus fell in sandstorm

123:4.6There was no way in which this ac­ci­dent could have been pre­vented. It was not charge­able to ne­glect by the mid­way tem­po­ral guard­i­ans, one pri­mary and one sec­ondary mid­wayer hav­ing been as­signed to the watch­care of the lad; nei­ther was it charge­able to the guard­ian ser­a­phim. It sim­ply could not have been avoided. But this slight ac­ci­dent, oc­cur­ring while Joseph was ab­sent in En­dor, caused such great anx­i­ety to de­velop in Mary’s mind that she un­wisely tried to keep Je­sus very close to her side for some months.

• overprotective after Jesus fell in sandstorm

123:6.2Al­though his mother had be­come un­duly anx­ious about his health and safety, she grad­u­ally be­came rec­on­ciled to these trips away from home. Je­sus’ un­cles and aunts were all very fond of him, and there en­sued a lively com­pe­ti­tion among them to se­cure his com­pany for these monthly vis­its through­out this and im­me­di­ately sub­se­quent years. His first week’s so­journ on his un­cle’s farm (since in­fancy) was in Jan­uary of this year; the first week’s fish­ing ex­pe­ri­ence on the Sea of Gal­i­lee oc­curred in the month of May.

• convinced Jesus would become temporal Messiah

123:6.8In Febru­ary, Na­hor, one of the teach­ers in a Je­ru­sa­lem academy of the rab­bis, came to Naz­a­reth to ob­serve Je­sus, hav­ing been on a sim­i­lar mis­sion to Zach­a­rias’s home near Je­ru­sa­lem. He came to Naz­a­reth at the in­sti­ga­tion of John’s fa­ther. While at first he was some­what shocked by Je­sus’ frank­ness and un­con­ven­tional man­ner of re­lat­ing him­self to things re­li­gious, he at­tributed it to the re­mote­ness of Gal­i­lee from the cen­ters of He­brew learn­ing and cul­ture and ad­vised Joseph and Mary to al­low him to take Je­sus back with him to Je­ru­sa­lem, where he could have the ad­van­tages of ed­u­ca­tion and train­ing at the cen­ter of Jew­ish cul­ture. Mary was half per­suaded to con­sent; she was con­vinced her el­dest son was to be­come the Mes­siah, the Jew­ish de­liv­erer; Joseph hes­i­tated; he was equally per­suaded that Je­sus was to grow up to be­come a man of des­tiny, but what that des­tiny would prove to be he was pro­foundly un­cer­tain. But he never re­ally doubted that his son was to ful­fill some great mis­sion on earth. The more he thought about Na­hor’s ad­vice, the more he ques­tioned the wis­dom of the pro­posed so­journ in Je­ru­sa­lem.

• faithfully discharged parental responsibilities

124:3.2Joseph and Mary were of­ten tempted to show some spe­cial fa­voritism for Je­sus or oth­er­wise to be­tray their knowl­edge that he was a child of prom­ise, a son of des­tiny. But both of his par­ents were ex­traor­di­nar­ily wise and saga­cious in all these mat­ters. The few times they did in any man­ner ex­hibit any pref­er­ence for him, even in the slight­est de­gree, the lad was quick to refuse all such spe­cial con­sid­er­a­tion.

• faithfully discharged parental responsibilities

124:4.4It was a try­ing ex­pe­ri­ence for Joseph and Mary to un­der­take the rear­ing of this un­prece­dented com­bi­na­tion of di­vin­ity and hu­man­ity, and they de­serve great credit for so faith­fully and suc­cess­fully dis­charg­ing their pa­ren­tal re­spon­si­bil­i­ties. In­creas­ingly Je­sus’ par­ents re­al­ized that there was some­thing super­hu­man res­i­dent within this el­dest son, but they never even faintly dreamed that this son of prom­ise was in­deed and in truth the ac­tual cre­ator of this lo­cal uni­verse of things and be­ings. Joseph and Mary lived and died with­out ever learn­ing that their son Je­sus re­ally was the Uni­verse Cre­ator in­car­nate in mor­tal flesh.

• convinced Jesus would become temporal Messiah

124:4.5This year Je­sus paid more at­ten­tion than ever to mu­sic, and he con­tin­ued to teach the home school for his broth­ers and sis­ters. It was at about this time that the lad be­came keenly con­scious of the dif­fer­ence be­tween the view­points of Joseph and Mary re­gard­ing the na­ture of his mis­sion. He pon­dered much over his par­ents’ dif­fer­ing opin­ions, of­ten hear­ing their dis­cus­sions when they thought he was sound asleep. More and more he in­clined to the view of his fa­ther, so that his mother was des­tined to be hurt by the re­al­iza­tion that her son was grad­u­ally re­ject­ing her guid­ance in mat­ters hav­ing to do with his life ca­reer. And, as the years passed, this breach of un­der­stand­ing widened. Less and less did Mary com­pre­hend the sig­nif­i­cance of Je­sus’ mis­sion, and in­creas­ingly was this good mother hurt by the fail­ure of her fa­vorite son to ful­fill her fond ex­pec­ta­tions.

• convinced Jesus would become temporal Messiah

125:6.13Joseph was puz­zled, but Mary, as she re­flected on these ex­pe­ri­ences, gained com­fort, even­tu­ally view­ing his ut­ter­ance on Oli­vet as pro­phetic of the Mes­sianic mis­sion of her son as Is­rael’s de­liv­erer. She set to work with re­newed en­ergy to mold his thoughts into pa­tri­otic and na­tion­al­is­tic chan­nels and en­listed the ef­forts of her brother, Je­sus’ fa­vorite un­cle; and in ev­ery other way did the mother of Je­sus ad­dress her­self to the task of prepar­ing her first-born son to as­sume the lead­er­ship of those who would re­store the throne of David and for­ever cast off the gen­tile yoke of po­lit­i­cal bond­age.

• basked in sunshine of maternal delusion

126:0.2This im­por­tant pe­riod in Je­sus’ youth­ful de­vel­op­ment be­gan with the con­clu­sion of the Je­ru­sa­lem visit and with his re­turn to Naz­a­reth. At first Mary was happy in the thought that she had her boy back once more, that Je­sus had re­turned home to be a du­ti­ful son—not that he was ever any­thing else—and that he would hence­forth be more re­spon­sive to her plans for his fu­ture life. But she was not for long to bask in this sun­shine of ma­ter­nal delu­sion and un­rec­og­nized fam­ily pride; very soon she was to be more com­pletely dis­il­lu­sioned. More and more the boy was in the com­pany of his fa­ther; less and less did he come to her with his prob­lems, while in­creas­ingly both his par­ents failed to com­pre­hend his fre­quent al­ter­na­tion be­tween the af­fairs of this world and the con­tem­pla­tion of his re­la­tion to his Fa­ther’s busi­ness. Frankly, they did not un­der­stand him, but they did truly love him.

• torn between love and fear; harassed by doubts

126:1.5By the be­gin­ning of this year both Joseph and Mary en­ter­tained fre­quent doubts about the des­tiny of their first-born son. He was in­deed a bril­liant and lov­able child, but he was so dif­fi­cult to un­der­stand, so hard to fathom, and again, noth­ing ex­traor­di­nary or mirac­u­lous ever hap­pened. Scores of times had his proud mother stood in breath­less an­tic­i­pa­tion, ex­pect­ing to see her son en­gage in some super­hu­man or mirac­u­lous per­for­mance, but al­ways were her hopes dashed down in cruel dis­ap­point­ment. And all this was dis­cour­ag­ing, even dis­heart­en­ing. The de­vout peo­ple of those days truly be­lieved that proph­ets and men of prom­ise al­ways demon­strated their call­ing and es­tab­lished their di­vine au­thor­ity by per­form­ing mir­a­cles and work­ing won­ders. But Je­sus did none of these things; where­fore was the con­fu­sion of his par­ents steadily in­creased as they con­tem­plated his fu­ture.

• convinced Jesus would become temporal Messiah

126:3.9By this time he had quite thor­oughly set­tled many things about his forth­com­ing work for the world, but he said noth­ing of these mat­ters to his mother, who still held stoutly to the idea of his be­ing the Jew­ish Mes­siah.

• torn between love and fear; harassed by doubts

126:3.13His pro­found pe­ri­ods of med­i­ta­tion, his fre­quent jour­neys to the hill­top for prayer, and the many strange ideas which Je­sus ad­vanced from time to time, thor­oughly alarmed his mother. Some­times she thought the lad was be­side him­self, and then she would steady her fears, re­mem­ber­ing that he was, af­ter all, a child of prom­ise and in some man­ner dif­fer­ent from other youths.

• did not understand Jesus

127:1.4As time went on, it be­came more dif­fi­cult for his mother and his broth­ers and sis­ters to un­der­stand him; they stum­bled over his say­ings and mis­in­ter­preted his do­ings. They were all un­fit­ted to com­pre­hend their el­dest brother’s life be­cause their mother had given them to un­der­stand that he was des­tined to be­come the de­liv­erer of the Jew­ish peo­ple. Af­ter they had re­ceived from Mary such in­ti­ma­tions as fam­ily se­crets, imag­ine their con­fu­sion when Je­sus would make frank de­nials of all such ideas and in­ten­tions.

• wanted Jesus to join Zealots

127:3.3Je­sus did much think­ing as they jour­neyed through Samaria, par­tic­u­larly at Bethel and when drink­ing from Ja­cob’s well. He and his brother dis­cussed the tra­di­tions of Abra­ham, Isaac, and Ja­cob. He did much to pre­pare James for what he was about to wit­ness at Je­ru­sa­lem, thus seek­ing to lessen the shock such as he him­self had ex­pe­ri­enced on his first visit to the tem­ple. But James was not so sen­si­tive to some of these sights. He com­mented on the per­func­tory and heart­less man­ner in which some of the priests per­formed their du­ties but on the whole greatly en­joyed his so­journ at Je­ru­sa­lem.

• concern regarding Rebecca and Jesus

127:5.1Al­though Je­sus was poor, his so­cial stand­ing in Naz­a­reth was in no way im­paired. He was one of the fore­most young men of the city and very highly re­garded by most of the young women. Since Je­sus was such a splen­did spec­i­men of ro­bust and in­tel­lec­tual man­hood, and con­sid­er­ing his rep­u­ta­tion as a spir­i­tual leader, it was not strange that Re­becca, the el­dest daugh­ter of Ezra, a wealthy mer­chant and trader of Naz­a­reth, should dis­cover that she was slowly falling in love with this son of Joseph. She first con­fided her af­fec­tion to Miriam, Je­sus’ sis­ter, and Miriam in turn talked all this over with her mother. Mary was in­tensely aroused. Was she about to lose her son, now be­come the in­dis­pens­able head of the fam­ily? Would trou­bles never cease? What next could hap­pen? And then she paused to con­tem­plate what ef­fect mar­riage would have upon Je­sus’ fu­ture ca­reer; not of­ten, but at least some­times, did she re­call the fact that Je­sus was a “child of prom­ise.” Af­ter she and Miriam had talked this mat­ter over, they de­cided to make an ef­fort to stop it be­fore Je­sus learned about it, by go­ing di­rect to Re­becca, lay­ing the whole story be­fore her, and hon­estly telling her about their be­lief that Je­sus was a son of des­tiny; that he was to be­come a great re­li­gious leader, per­haps the Mes­siah.

127:5.2Re­becca lis­tened in­tently; she was thrilled with the recital and more than ever de­ter­mined to cast her lot with this man of her choice and to share his ca­reer of lead­er­ship. She ar­gued (to her­self) that such a man would all the more need a faith­ful and ef­fi­cient wife. She in­ter­preted Mary’s ef­forts to dis­suade her as a nat­u­ral re­ac­tion to the dread of los­ing the head and sole sup­port of her fam­ily; but know­ing that her fa­ther ap­proved of her at­trac­tion for the car­pen­ter’s son, she rightly reck­oned that he would gladly sup­ply the fam­ily with suf­fi­cient in­come fully to com­pen­sate for the loss of Je­sus’ earn­ings. When her fa­ther agreed to such a plan, Re­becca had fur­ther con­fer­ences with Mary and Miriam, and when she failed to win their sup­port, she made bold to go di­rectly to Je­sus. This she did with the co-op­er­a­tion of her fa­ther, who in­vited Je­sus to their home for the cel­e­bra­tion of Re­becca’s sev­en­teenth birth­day.

• shocked at Jesus’ Passover views

127:6.7That evening about twi­light these four sat down and par­took of the first Pass­over feast ever to be cel­e­brated by de­vout Jews with­out the paschal lamb. The un­leav­ened bread and the wine had been made ready for this Pass­over, and these em­blems, which Je­sus termed “the bread of life” and “the wa­ter of life,” he served to his com­pan­ions, and they ate in solemn con­for­mity with the teach­ings just im­parted. It was his cus­tom to en­gage in this sacra­men­tal rit­ual when­ever he paid sub­se­quent vis­its to Beth­any. When he re­turned home, he told all this to his mother. She was shocked at first but came grad­u­ally to see his view­point; nev­er­the­less, she was greatly re­lieved when Je­sus as­sured her that he did not in­tend to in­tro­duce this new idea of the Pass­over in their fam­ily. At home with the chil­dren he con­tin­ued, year by year, to eat the Pass­over “ac­cord­ing to the law of Moses.”

• torn between love and fear; harassed by doubts

128:3.9More and more the Naz­a­reth fam­ily be­came en­grossed with their im­me­di­ate and hu­man prob­lems; not of­ten was men­tion made of the fu­ture mis­sion of Je­sus, and very sel­dom did he him­self speak of his fu­ture ca­reer. His mother rarely thought about his be­ing a child of prom­ise. She was slowly giv­ing up the idea that Je­sus was to ful­fill any di­vine mis­sion on earth, yet at times her faith was re­vived when she paused to re­call the Ga­briel vis­i­ta­tion be­fore the child was born.

• torn between love and fear; harassed by doubts

128:7.7This year Je­sus en­joyed more than usual leisure, and he de­voted much time to train­ing James in the man­age­ment of the re­pair shop and Joseph in the di­rec­tion of home af­fairs. Mary sensed that he was mak­ing ready to leave them. Leave them to go where? To do what? She had about given up the thought that Je­sus was the Mes­siah. She could not un­der­stand him; she sim­ply could not fathom her first-born son.

• did not understand Jesus

134:1.5Je­sus vis­ited with the in­di­vid­ual mem­bers of his fam­ily quite nor­mally and nat­u­rally, but when they were all to­gether, he had so lit­tle to say that they re­marked about it among them­selves. Mary es­pe­cially was dis­con­certed by this un­usu­ally pe­cu­liar be­hav­ior of her first-born son.

• faith in Jesus steadied by memory of Gabriel’s appearance

137:3.3Jude was pres­ent at Je­sus’ bap­tism and, with his brother James, had be­come a firm be­liever in Je­sus’ mis­sion on earth. Al­though both James and Jude were much per­plexed as to the na­ture of their brother’s mis­sion, their mother had res­ur­rected all her early hopes of Je­sus as the Mes­siah, the son of David, and she en­cour­aged her sons to have faith in their brother as the de­liv­erer of Is­rael.

137:3.4Je­sus ar­rived in Ca­per­naum Mon­day night, but he did not go to his own home, where lived James and his mother; he went di­rectly to the home of Zeb­e­dee. All his friends at Ca­per­naum saw a great and pleas­ant change in him. Once more he seemed to be com­par­a­tively cheer­ful and more like him­self as he was dur­ing the ear­lier years at Naz­a­reth. For years pre­vi­ous to his bap­tism and the iso­la­tion pe­ri­ods just be­fore and just af­ter, he had grown in­creas­ingly se­ri­ous and self-con­tained. Now he seemed quite like his old self to all of them. There was about him some­thing of ma­jes­tic im­port and ex­alted as­pect, but he was once again light­hearted and joy­ful.

137:3.5Mary was thrilled with ex­pec­ta­tion. She an­tic­i­pated that the prom­ise of Ga­briel was near­ing ful­fill­ment. She ex­pected all Pales­tine soon to be star­tled and stunned by the mirac­u­lous rev­e­la­tion of her son as the super­nat­u­ral king of the Jews. But to all of the many ques­tions which his mother, James, Jude, and Zeb­e­dee asked, Je­sus only smil­ingly replied: “It is bet­ter that I tarry here for a while; I must do the will of my Fa­ther who is in heaven.”

137:3.6On the next day, Tues­day, they all jour­neyed over to Cana for the wed­ding of Naomi, which was to take place on the fol­low­ing day. And in spite of Je­sus’ re­peated warn­ings that they tell no man about him “un­til the Fa­ther’s hour shall come,” they in­sisted on qui­etly spread­ing the news abroad that they had found the De­liv­erer. They each con­fi­dently ex­pected that Je­sus would in­au­gu­rate his as­sump­tion of Mes­sianic au­thor­ity at the forth­com­ing wed­ding at Cana, and that he would do so with great power and sub­lime grandeur. They re­mem­bered what had been told them about the phe­nom­ena at­ten­dant upon his bap­tism, and they be­lieved that his fu­ture course on earth would be marked by in­creas­ing man­i­fes­ta­tions of super­nat­u­ral won­ders and mirac­u­lous demon­stra­tions. Ac­cord­ingly, the en­tire coun­try­side was prepar­ing to gather to­gether at Cana for the wed­ding feast of Naomi and Jo­hab the son of Nathan.

137:3.7Mary had not been so joy­ous in years. She jour­neyed to Cana in the spirit of the queen mother on the way to wit­ness the coro­na­tion of her son. Not since he was thir­teen years old had Je­sus’ fam­ily and friends seen him so care­free and happy, so thought­ful and un­der­stand­ing of the wishes and de­sires of his as­so­ciates, so touch­ingly sym­pa­thetic. And so they all whis­pered among them­selves, in small groups, won­der­ing what was go­ing to hap­pen. What would this strange per­son do next? How would he usher in the glory of the com­ing king­dom? And they were all thrilled with the thought that they were to be pres­ent to see the rev­e­la­tion of the might and power of Is­rael’s God.

• ambitious mother

137:4.8Through­out a pe­riod of many years, Mary had al­ways turned to Je­sus for help in ev­ery cri­sis of their home life at Naz­a­reth so that it was only nat­u­ral for her to think of him at this time. But this am­bi­tious mother had still other mo­tives for ap­peal­ing to her el­dest son on this oc­ca­sion. As Je­sus was stand­ing alone in a cor­ner of the gar­den, his mother ap­proached him, say­ing, “My son, they have no wine.” And Je­sus an­swered, “My good woman, what have I to do with that?” Said Mary, “But I be­lieve your hour has come; can­not you help us?” Je­sus replied: “Again I de­clare that I have not come to do things in this wise. Why do you trou­ble me again with these mat­ters?” And then, break­ing down in tears, Mary en­treated him, “But, my son, I prom­ised them that you would help us; won’t you please do some­thing for me?” And then spoke Je­sus: “Woman, what have you to do with mak­ing such promises? See that you do it not again. We must in all things wait upon the will of the Fa­ther in heaven.”

• did not understand Jesus

137:7.1For four long months—March, April, May, and June—this tar­ry­ing time con­tin­ued; Je­sus held over one hun­dred long and earnest, though cheer­ful and joy­ous, ses­sions with these six as­so­ciates and his own brother James. Ow­ing to sick­ness in his fam­ily, Jude sel­dom was able to at­tend these classes. James, Je­sus’ brother, did not lose faith in him, but dur­ing these months of de­lay and in­ac­tion Mary nearly de­spaired of her son. Her faith, raised to such heights at Cana, now sank to new low lev­els. She could only fall back on her so oft-re­peated ex­cla­ma­tion: “I can­not un­der­stand him. I can­not fig­ure out what it all means.” But James’s wife did much to bol­ster Mary’s cour­age.

• increasing disappointment, humiliation, despair

138:0.1Af­ter preach­ing the ser­mon on “The King­dom,” Je­sus called the six apos­tles to­gether that af­ter­noon and be­gan to dis­close his plans for vis­it­ing the cities around and about the Sea of Gal­i­lee. His broth­ers James and Jude were very much hurt be­cause they were not called to this con­fer­ence. Up to this time they had re­garded them­selves as be­long­ing to Je­sus’ in­ner cir­cle of as­so­ciates. But Je­sus planned to have no close rel­a­tives as mem­bers of this corps of apos­tolic di­rec­tors of the king­dom. This fail­ure to in­clude James and Jude among the cho­sen few, to­gether with his ap­par­ent aloof­ness from his mother ever since the ex­pe­ri­ence at Cana, was the start­ing point of an ever-widen­ing gulf be­tween Je­sus and his fam­ily. This sit­u­a­tion con­tin­ued through­out his pub­lic min­istry—they very nearly re­jected him—and these dif­fer­ences were not fully re­moved un­til af­ter his death and res­ur­rec­tion. His mother con­stantly wa­vered be­tween at­ti­tudes of fluc­tu­at­ing faith and hope, and in­creas­ing emo­tions of dis­ap­point­ment, hu­mil­i­a­tion, and de­spair. Only Ruth, the young­est, re­mained unswerv­ingly loyal to her fa­ther-brother.

• faith in Jesus steadied by memory of Gabriel’s appearance

154:6.1It was about eight o’clock on this Sun­day morn­ing when five mem­bers of Je­sus’ earth fam­ily ar­rived on the scene in re­sponse to the ur­gent sum­mons of Jude’s sis­ter-in-law. Of all his fam­ily in the flesh, only one, Ruth, be­lieved whole­heart­edly and con­tin­u­ously in the di­vin­ity of his mis­sion on earth. Jude and James, and even Joseph, still re­tained much of their faith in Je­sus, but they had per­mit­ted pride to in­ter­fere with their bet­ter judg­ment and real spir­i­tual in­cli­na­tions. Mary was like­wise torn be­tween love and fear, be­tween mother love and fam­ily pride. Though she was ha­rassed by doubts, she could never quite for­get the visit of Ga­briel ere Je­sus was born. The Phar­isees had been la­bor­ing to per­suade Mary that Je­sus was be­side him­self, de­mented. They urged her to go with her sons and seek to dis­suade him from fur­ther ef­forts at pub­lic teach­ing. They as­sured Mary that soon Je­sus’ health would break, and that only dis­honor and dis­grace could come upon the en­tire fam­ily as a re­sult of al­low­ing him to go on. And so, when the word came from Jude’s sis­ter-in-law, all five of them started at once for Zeb­e­dee’s house, hav­ing been to­gether at Mary’s home, where they had met with the Phar­isees the evening be­fore. They had talked with the Je­ru­sa­lem lead­ers long into the night, and all were more or less con­vinced that Je­sus was act­ing strangely, that he had acted strangely for some time. While Ruth could not ex­plain all of his con­duct, she in­sisted that he had al­ways treated his fam­ily fairly and re­fused to agree to the pro­gram of try­ing to dis­suade him from fur­ther work.

154:6.2On the way to Zeb­e­dee’s house they talked these things over and agreed among them­selves to try to per­suade Je­sus to come home with them, for, said Mary: “I know I could in­flu­ence my son if he would only come home and lis­ten to me.” James and Jude had heard ru­mors con­cern­ing the plans to ar­rest Je­sus and take him to Je­ru­sa­lem for trial. They also feared for their own safety. As long as Je­sus was a pop­u­lar fig­ure in the pub­lic eye, his fam­ily al­lowed mat­ters to drift along, but now that the peo­ple of Ca­per­naum and the lead­ers at Je­ru­sa­lem had sud­denly turned against him, they be­gan keenly to feel the pres­sure of the sup­posed dis­grace of their em­bar­rass­ing po­si­tion.

154:6.3They had ex­pected to meet Je­sus, take him aside, and urge him to go home with them. They had thought to as­sure him that they would for­get his ne­glect of them—they would for­give and for­get—if he would only give up the fool­ish­ness of try­ing to preach a new re­li­gion which could bring only trou­ble to him­self and dis­honor upon his fam­ily. To all of this Ruth would say only: “I will tell my brother that I think he is a man of God, and that I hope he would be will­ing to die be­fore he would al­low these wicked Phar­isees to stop his preach­ing.” Joseph prom­ised to keep Ruth quiet while the oth­ers la­bored with Je­sus.

154:6.4When they reached the Zeb­e­dee house, Je­sus was in the very midst of de­liv­er­ing his part­ing ad­dress to the dis­ci­ples. They sought to gain en­trance to the house, but it was crowded to over­flow­ing. Fi­nally they es­tab­lished them­selves on the back porch and had word passed in to Je­sus, from per­son to per­son, so that it fi­nally was whis­pered to him by Si­mon Pe­ter, who in­ter­rupted his talk­ing for the pur­pose, and who said: “Be­hold, your mother and your broth­ers are out­side, and they are very anx­ious to speak with you.” Now it did not oc­cur to his mother how im­por­tant was the giv­ing of this part­ing mes­sage to his fol­low­ers, nei­ther did she know that his ad­dress was likely to be ter­mi­nated any mo­ment by the ar­rival of his ap­pre­hend­ers. She re­ally thought, af­ter so long an ap­par­ent es­trange­ment, in view of the fact that she and his broth­ers had shown the grace ac­tu­ally to come to him, that Je­sus would cease speak­ing and come to them the mo­ment he re­ceived word they were wait­ing.

154:6.5It was just an­other of those in­stances in which his earth fam­ily could not com­pre­hend that he must be about his Fa­ther’s busi­ness. And so Mary and his broth­ers were deeply hurt when, not­with­stand­ing that he paused in his speak­ing to re­ceive the mes­sage, in­stead of his rush­ing out to greet them, they heard his mu­si­cal voice speak with in­creased vol­ume: “Say to my mother and my broth­ers that they should have no fear for me. The Fa­ther who sent me into the world will not for­sake me; nei­ther shall any harm come upon my fam­ily. Bid them be of good cour­age and put their trust in the Fa­ther of the king­dom. But, af­ter all, who is my mother and who are my broth­ers?” And stretch­ing forth his hands to­ward all of his dis­ci­ples as­sem­bled in the room, he said: “I have no mother; I have no broth­ers. Be­hold my mother and be­hold my breth­ren! For whoso­ever does the will of my Fa­ther who is in heaven, the same is my mother, my brother, and my sis­ter.”

154:6.6And when Mary heard these words, she col­lapsed in Jude’s arms. They car­ried her out in the gar­den to re­vive her while Je­sus spoke the con­clud­ing words of his part­ing mes­sage. He would then have gone out to con­fer with his mother and his broth­ers, but a mes­sen­ger ar­rived in haste from Tiberias bring­ing word that the of­fi­cers of the San­hedrin were on their way with au­thor­ity to ar­rest Je­sus and carry him to Je­ru­sa­lem. An­drew re­ceived this mes­sage and, in­ter­rupt­ing Je­sus, told it to him.

154:6.7An­drew did not re­call that David had posted some twenty-five sen­tinels about the Zeb­e­dee house, and that no one could take them by sur­prise; so he asked Je­sus what should be done. The Mas­ter stood there in si­lence while his mother, hav­ing heard the words, “I have no mother,” was re­cov­er­ing from the shock in the gar­den. It was at just this time that a woman in the room stood up and ex­claimed, “Blessed is the womb that bore you and blessed are the breasts that nursed you.” Je­sus turned aside a mo­ment from his con­ver­sa­tion with An­drew to an­swer this woman by say­ing, “No, rather is the one blessed who hears the word of God and dares to obey it.”

154:6.8Mary and Je­sus’ broth­ers thought that Je­sus did not un­der­stand them, that he had lost in­ter­est in them, lit­tle re­al­iz­ing that it was they who failed to un­der­stand Je­sus. Je­sus fully un­der­stood how dif­fi­cult it is for men to break with their past. He knew how hu­man be­ings are swayed by the preacher’s elo­quence, and how the con­science re­sponds to emo­tional ap­peal as the mind does to logic and rea­son, but he also knew how far more dif­fi­cult it is to per­suade men to dis­own the past.

154:6.9It is for­ever true that all who may think they are mis­un­der­stood or not ap­pre­ci­ated have in Je­sus a sym­pa­thiz­ing friend and an un­der­stand­ing coun­selor. He had warned his apos­tles that a man’s foes may be they of his own house­hold, but he had hardly re­al­ized how near this pre­dic­tion would come to ap­ply to his own ex­pe­ri­ence. Je­sus did not for­sake his earth fam­ily to do his Fa­ther’s work—they for­sook him. Later on, af­ter the Mas­ter’s death and res­ur­rec­tion, when James be­came con­nected with the early Chris­tian move­ment, he suf­fered im­mea­sur­ably as a re­sult of his fail­ure to en­joy this ear­lier as­so­ci­a­tion with Je­sus and his dis­ci­ples.

154:6.10In pass­ing through these events, Je­sus chose to be guided by the lim­ited knowl­edge of his hu­man mind. He de­sired to un­dergo the ex­pe­ri­ence with his as­so­ciates as a mere man. And it was in the hu­man mind of Je­sus to see his fam­ily be­fore he left. He did not wish to stop in the midst of his dis­course and thus ren­der their first meet­ing af­ter so long a sep­a­ra­tion such a pub­lic af­fair. He had in­tended to fin­ish his ad­dress and then have a visit with them be­fore leav­ing, but this plan was thwarted by the con­spir­acy of events which im­me­di­ately fol­lowed.

154:6.11The haste of their flight was aug­mented by the ar­rival of a party of David’s mes­sen­gers at the rear en­trance of the Zeb­e­dee home. The com­mo­tion pro­duced by these men fright­ened the apos­tles into think­ing that these new ar­rivals might be their ap­pre­hend­ers, and in fear of im­me­di­ate ar­rest, they has­tened through the front en­trance to the wait­ing boat. And all of this ex­plains why Je­sus did not see his fam­ily wait­ing on the back porch.

154:6.12But he did say to David Zeb­e­dee as he en­tered the boat in hasty flight: “Tell my mother and my broth­ers that I ap­pre­ci­ate their com­ing, and that I in­tended to see them. Ad­mon­ish them to find no of­fense in me but rather to seek for a knowl­edge of the will of God and for grace and cour­age to do that will.”

123:1.7In July of this year, one month be­fore Je­sus was four years old, an out­break of ma­lig­nant in­testi­nal trou­ble spread over all Naz­a­reth from con­tact with the car­a­van trav­el­ers. Mary be­came so alarmed by the dan­ger of Je­sus be­ing ex­posed to this epi­demic of dis­ease that she bun­dled up both her chil­dren and fled to the coun­try home of her brother, sev­eral miles south of Naz­a­reth on the Megiddo road near Sarid. They did not re­turn to Naz­a­reth for more than two months; Je­sus greatly en­joyed this, his first ex­pe­ri­ence on a farm.

123:6.1This was an in­ter­est­ing year at school. Al­though Je­sus was not an un­usual stu­dent, he was a dili­gent pupil and be­longed to the more pro­gres­sive third of the class, do­ing his work so well that he was ex­cused from at­ten­dance one week out of each month. This week he usu­ally spent ei­ther with his fish­er­man un­cle on the shores of the Sea of Gal­i­lee near Mag­dala or on the farm of an­other un­cle (his mother’s brother) five miles south of Naz­a­reth.

128:7.8Je­sus spent a great deal of time this year with the in­di­vid­ual mem­bers of his fam­ily. He would take them for long and fre­quent strolls up the hill and through the coun­try­side. Be­fore har­vest he took Jude to the farmer un­cle south of Naz­a­reth, but Jude did not re­main long af­ter the har­vest. He ran away, and Si­mon later found him with the fish­er­men at the lake. When Si­mon brought him back home, Je­sus talked things over with the run­away lad and, since he wanted to be a fish­er­man, went over to Mag­dala with him and put him in the care of a rel­a­tive, a fish­er­man; and Jude worked fairly well and reg­u­larly from that time on un­til his mar­riage, and he con­tin­ued as a fish­er­man af­ter his mar­riage.

122:2.1Je­sus’ life­work on Uran­tia was re­ally be­gun by John the Bap­tist. Zach­a­rias, John’s fa­ther, be­longed to the Jew­ish priest­hood, while his mother, Eliz­a­beth, was a mem­ber of the more pros­per­ous branch of the same large fam­ily group to which Mary the mother of Je­sus also be­longed. Zach­a­rias and Eliz­a­beth, though they had been mar­ried many years, were child­less.

122:2.6Ga­briel ap­peared to Mary about the mid­dle of Novem­ber, 8 B.C., while she was at work in her Naz­a­reth home. Later on, af­ter Mary knew with­out doubt that she was to be­come a mother, she per­suaded Joseph to let her jour­ney to the City of Ju­dah, four miles west of Je­ru­sa­lem, in the hills, to visit Eliz­a­beth. Ga­briel had in­formed each of these moth­ers-to-be of his ap­pear­ance to the other. Nat­u­rally they were anx­ious to get to­gether, com­pare ex­pe­ri­ences, and talk over the prob­a­ble fu­tures of their sons. Mary re­mained with her dis­tant cousin for three weeks. Eliz­a­beth did much to strengthen Mary’s faith in the vi­sion of Ga­briel, so that she re­turned home more fully ded­i­cated to the call to mother the child of des­tiny whom she was so soon to pre­sent to the world as a help­less babe, an av­er­age and nor­mal in­fant of the realm.

122:3.3Upon her re­turn, Mary went to visit her par­ents, Joachim and Han­nah. Her two broth­ers and two sis­ters, as well as her par­ents, were al­ways very skep­ti­cal about the di­vine mis­sion of Je­sus, though, of course, at this time they knew noth­ing of the Ga­briel vis­i­ta­tion. But Mary did con­fide to her sis­ter Sa­lome that she thought her son was des­tined to be­come a great teacher.

127:2.4One of Je­sus’ un­cles (Mary’s brother Si­mon) had al­ready joined this group, sub­se­quently be­com­ing an of­fi­cer in the Galilean di­vi­sion. And for sev­eral years there was some­thing of an es­trange­ment be­tween Je­sus and his un­cle.

187:3.2Stand­ing near the cross at one time or an­other dur­ing the cru­ci­fix­ion were Mary, Ruth, Jude, John, Sa­lome (John’s mother), and a group of earnest women be­liev­ers in­clud­ing Mary the wife of Clopas and sis­ter of Je­sus’ mother, Mary Mag­da­lene, and Re­becca, one­time of Sep­pho­ris. These and other friends of Je­sus held their peace while they wit­nessed his great pa­tience and for­ti­tude and gazed upon his in­tense suf­fer­ings.

188:1.7While all this was go­ing on, the women were hid­ing near at hand so that they saw it all and ob­served where the Mas­ter had been laid. They thus se­creted them­selves be­cause it was not per­mis­si­ble for women to as­so­ciate with men at such a time. These women did not think Je­sus had been prop­erly pre­pared for burial, and they agreed among them­selves to go back to the home of Joseph, rest over the Sab­bath, make ready spices and oint­ments, and re­turn on Sun­day morn­ing prop­erly to pre­pare the Mas­ter’s body for the death rest. The women who thus tar­ried by the tomb on this Fri­day evening were: Mary Mag­da­lene, Mary the wife of Clopas, Martha an­other sis­ter of Je­sus’ mother, and Re­becca of Sep­pho­ris.

125:6.4The evening be­fore, Je­sus’ par­ents had heard about this strange youth who so deftly sparred with the ex­pounders of the law, but it had not oc­curred to them that this lad was their son. They had about de­cided to jour­ney out to the home of Zach­a­rias as they thought Je­sus might have gone thither to see Eliz­a­beth and John. Think­ing Zach­a­rias might per­haps be at the tem­ple, they stopped there on their way to the City of Ju­dah. As they strolled through the courts of the tem­ple, imag­ine their sur­prise and amaze­ment when they rec­og­nized the voice of the miss­ing lad and be­held him seated among the tem­ple teach­ers.

125:6.5Joseph was speech­less, but Mary gave vent to her long-pent-up fear and anx­i­ety when, rush­ing up to the lad, now stand­ing to greet his as­ton­ished par­ents, she said: “My child, why have you treated us like this? It is now more than three days that your fa­ther and I have searched for you sor­row­ing. What­ever pos­sessed you to desert us?” It was a tense mo­ment. All eyes were turned on Je­sus to hear what he would say. His fa­ther looked re­prov­ingly at him but said noth­ing.

125:6.6It should be re­mem­bered that Je­sus was sup­posed to be a young man. He had fin­ished the reg­u­lar school­ing of a child, had been rec­og­nized as a son of the law, and had re­ceived con­se­cra­tion as a cit­i­zen of Is­rael. And yet his mother more than mildly up­braided him be­fore all the peo­ple as­sem­bled, right in the midst of the most se­ri­ous and sub­lime ef­fort of his young life, thus bring­ing to an in­glo­ri­ous ter­mi­na­tion one of the great­est op­por­tu­ni­ties ever to be granted him to func­tion as a teacher of truth, a preacher of righ­teous­ness, a re­vealer of the lov­ing char­ac­ter of his Fa­ther in heaven.

125:6.7But the lad was equal to the oc­ca­sion. When you take into fair con­sid­er­a­tion all the fac­tors which com­bined to make up this sit­u­a­tion, you will be bet­ter pre­pared to fathom the wis­dom of the boy’s re­ply to his mother’s un­in­tended re­buke. Af­ter a mo­ment’s thought, Je­sus an­swered his mother, say­ing: “Why is it that you have so long sought me? Would you not ex­pect to find me in my Fa­ther’s house since the time has come when I should be about my Fa­ther’s busi­ness?”

125:6.8Ev­ery­one was as­ton­ished at the lad’s man­ner of speak­ing. Silently they all with­drew and left him stand­ing alone with his par­ents. Pres­ently the young man re­lieved the em­bar­rass­ment of all three when he qui­etly said: “Come, my par­ents, none has done aught but that which he thought best. Our Fa­ther in heaven has or­dained these things; let us de­part for home.”

122:0.3From the three cou­ples nom­i­nated, Ga­briel made the per­sonal choice of Joseph and Mary, sub­se­quently mak­ing his per­sonal ap­pear­ance to Mary, at which time he im­parted to her the glad tid­ings that she had been se­lected to be­come the earth mother of the be­stowal child.

126:3.11Af­ter all, could it be pos­si­ble that his mother was right? In most mat­ters, when dif­fer­ences of opin­ion had arisen in the past, she had been right. If he were a new teacher and not the Mes­siah, then how should he rec­og­nize the Jew­ish Mes­siah if such a one should ap­pear in Je­ru­sa­lem dur­ing the time of his earth mis­sion; and, fur­ther, what should be his re­la­tion to this Jew­ish Mes­siah? And what should be his re­la­tion, af­ter em­bark­ing on his life mis­sion, to his fam­ily? to the Jew­ish com­mon­wealth and re­li­gion? to the Ro­man Em­pire? to the gen­tiles and their re­li­gions? Each of these mo­men­tous prob­lems this young Galilean turned over in his mind and se­ri­ously pon­dered while he con­tin­ued to work at the car­pen­ter’s bench, la­bo­ri­ously mak­ing a liv­ing for him­self, his mother, and eight other hun­gry mouths.

122:7.2It was not nec­es­sary that Mary should go to Beth­le­hem for en­roll­ment—Joseph was au­tho­rized to reg­is­ter for his fam­ily—but Mary, be­ing an ad­ven­tur­ous and ag­gres­sive per­son, in­sisted on ac­com­pa­ny­ing him. She feared be­ing left alone lest the child be born while Joseph was away, and again, Beth­le­hem be­ing not far from the City of Ju­dah, Mary fore­saw a pos­si­ble plea­sur­able visit with her kinswoman Eliz­a­beth.

127:1.7By the end of this year he had just about made up his mind that he would, af­ter rear­ing his fam­ily and see­ing them mar­ried, en­ter pub­licly upon his work as a teacher of truth and as a re­vealer of the heav­enly Fa­ther to the world. He knew he was not to be­come the ex­pected Jew­ish Mes­siah, and he con­cluded that it was next to use­less to dis­cuss these mat­ters with his mother; he de­cided to al­low her to en­ter­tain what­ever ideas she might choose since all he had said in the past had made lit­tle or no im­pres­sion upon her and he re­called that his fa­ther had never been able to say any­thing that would change her mind. From this year on he talked less and less with his mother, or any­one else, about these prob­lems. His was such a pe­cu­liar mis­sion that no one liv­ing on earth could give him ad­vice con­cern­ing its pros­e­cu­tion.

127:1.8He was a real though youth­ful fa­ther to the fam­ily; he spent ev­ery pos­si­ble hour with the young­sters, and they truly loved him. His mother grieved to see him work so hard; she sor­rowed that he was day by day toil­ing at the car­pen­ter’s bench earn­ing a liv­ing for the fam­ily in­stead of be­ing, as they had so fondly planned, at Je­ru­sa­lem study­ing with the rab­bis. While there was much about her son that Mary could not un­der­stand, she did love him, and she most thor­oughly ap­pre­ci­ated the will­ing man­ner in which he shoul­dered the re­spon­si­bil­ity of the home.

129:3.4When Je­sus re­turned to Pales­tine, he did noth­ing to change the opin­ion of his fam­ily that he had gone from Je­ru­sa­lem to Alexan­dria; he per­mit­ted them to con­tinue in the be­lief that all the time he had been ab­sent from Pales­tine had been spent in that city of learn­ing and cul­ture. Only Zeb­e­dee the boat­builder of Beth­saida knew the facts about these mat­ters, and Zeb­e­dee told no one.

134:1.2At the end of his Med­i­ter­ra­nean jour­ney Je­sus had re­ceived suf­fi­cient money to meet his liv­ing ex­penses al­most up to the time of the be­gin­ning of his pub­lic min­istry. But aside from Zeb­e­dee of Ca­per­naum and the peo­ple whom he met on this ex­traor­di­nary trip, the world never knew that he made this jour­ney. His fam­ily al­ways be­lieved that he spent this time in study at Alexan­dria. Je­sus never con­firmed these be­liefs, nei­ther did he make open de­nial of such mis­un­der­stand­ings.

186:0.1As Je­sus and his ac­cusers started off to see Herod, the Mas­ter turned to the Apos­tle John and said: “John, you can do no more for me. Go to my mother and bring her to see me ere I die.” When John heard his Mas­ter’s re­quest, al­though re­luc­tant to leave him alone among his en­e­mies, he has­tened off to Beth­any, where the en­tire fam­ily of Je­sus was as­sem­bled in wait­ing at the home of Martha and Mary, the sis­ters of Laz­a­rus whom Je­sus raised from the dead.

186:0.3When Mary the mother of Je­sus started out with John to go to her son, his sis­ter Ruth re­fused to re­main be­hind with the rest of the fam­ily. Since she was de­ter­mined to ac­com­pany her mother, her brother Jude went with her. The rest of the Mas­ter’s fam­ily re­mained in Beth­any un­der the di­rec­tion of James, and al­most ev­ery hour the mes­sen­gers of David Zeb­e­dee brought them re­ports con­cern­ing the prog­ress of that ter­ri­ble busi­ness of putting to death their el­dest brother, Je­sus of Naz­a­reth.

122:2.2It was late in the month of June, 8 B.C., about three months af­ter the mar­riage of Joseph and Mary, that Ga­briel ap­peared to Eliz­a­beth at noon­tide one day, just as he later made his pres­ence known to Mary. Said Ga­briel:

122:5.8When Joseph was a young man, he was em­ployed by Mary’s fa­ther in the work of build­ing an ad­di­tion to his house, and it was when Mary brought Joseph a cup of wa­ter, dur­ing a noon­time meal, that the court­ship of the pair who were des­tined to be­come the par­ents of Je­sus re­ally be­gan.

122:5.9Joseph and Mary were mar­ried, in ac­cor­dance with Jew­ish cus­tom, at Mary’s home in the en­vi­rons of Naz­a­reth when Joseph was twenty-one years old. This mar­riage con­cluded a nor­mal court­ship of al­most two years’ du­ra­tion. Shortly there­after they moved into their new home in Naz­a­reth, which had been built by Joseph with the as­sis­tance of two of his broth­ers. The house was lo­cated near the foot of the near-by el­e­vated land which so charm­ingly over­looked the sur­round­ing coun­try­side. In this home, es­pe­cially pre­pared, these young and ex­pec­tant par­ents had thought to wel­come the child of prom­ise, lit­tle re­al­iz­ing that this mo­men­tous event of a uni­verse was to tran­spire while they would be ab­sent from home in Beth­le­hem of Judea.

134:1.6About the time Je­sus was prepar­ing to leave Naz­a­reth, the con­duc­tor of a large car­a­van which was pass­ing through the city was taken vi­o­lently ill, and Je­sus, be­ing a lin­guist, vol­un­teered to take his place. Since this trip would ne­ces­si­tate his ab­sence for a year, and inas­much as all his broth­ers were mar­ried and his mother was liv­ing at home with Ruth, Je­sus called a fam­ily con­fer­ence at which he pro­posed that his mother and Ruth go to Ca­per­naum to live in the home which he had so re­cently given to James. Ac­cord­ingly, a few days af­ter Je­sus left with the car­a­van, Mary and Ruth moved to Ca­per­naum, where they lived for the rest of Mary’s life in the home that Je­sus had pro­vided. Joseph and his fam­ily moved into the old Naz­a­reth home.

123:2.3Je­sus was five years old in Au­gust of this year, and we will, there­fore, re­fer to this as his fifth (cal­en­dar) year of life. In this year, 2 B.C., a lit­tle more than one month be­fore his fifth birth­day an­niver­sary, Je­sus was made very happy by the com­ing of his sis­ter Miriam, who was born on the night of July 11. Dur­ing the evening of the fol­low­ing day Je­sus had a long talk with his fa­ther con­cern­ing the man­ner in which var­i­ous groups of liv­ing things are born into the world as sep­a­rate in­di­vid­u­als. The most valu­able part of Je­sus’ early ed­u­ca­tion was se­cured from his par­ents in an­swer to his thought­ful and search­ing in­quiries. Joseph never failed to do his full duty in tak­ing pains and spend­ing time an­swer­ing the boy’s nu­mer­ous ques­tions. From the time Je­sus was five years old un­til he was ten, he was one con­tin­u­ous ques­tion mark. While Joseph and Mary could not al­ways an­swer his ques­tions, they never failed fully to dis­cuss his in­quiries and in ev­ery other pos­si­ble way to as­sist him in his ef­forts to reach a sat­is­fac­tory so­lu­tion of the prob­lem which his alert mind had sug­gested.

80:7.7It was dur­ing this age in Crete that the mother cult of the de­scen­dants of Cain at­tained its great­est vogue. This cult glo­ri­fied Eve in the wor­ship of the “great mother.” Im­ages of Eve were ev­ery­where. Thou­sands of pub­lic shrines were erected through­out Crete and Asia Mi­nor. And this mother cult per­sisted on down to the times of Christ, be­com­ing later in­cor­po­rated in the early Chris­tian re­li­gion un­der the guise of the glo­ri­fi­ca­tion and wor­ship of Mary the earth mother of Je­sus.

• average person of day and generation

119:7.7Je­sus’ hu­man par­ents were av­er­age peo­ple of their day and gen­er­a­tion, and this in­car­nated Son of God was thus born of woman and was reared in the or­di­nary man­ner of the chil­dren of that race and age.

• remarkable lineage but genealogies not genuine

122:4.4Most of the so-called Mes­sianic prophe­cies of the Old Tes­ta­ment were made to ap­ply to Je­sus long af­ter his life had been lived on earth. For cen­turies the He­brew proph­ets had pro­claimed the com­ing of a de­liv­erer, and these promises had been con­strued by suc­ces­sive gen­er­a­tions as re­fer­ring to a new Jew­ish ruler who would sit upon the throne of David and, by the re­puted mirac­u­lous meth­ods of Moses, pro­ceed to es­tab­lish the Jews in Pales­tine as a pow­er­ful na­tion, free from all for­eign dom­i­na­tion. Again, many fig­u­ra­tive pas­sages found through­out the He­brew scrip­tures were sub­se­quently mis­ap­plied to the life mis­sion of Je­sus. Many Old Tes­ta­ment say­ings were so dis­torted as to ap­pear to fit some episode of the Mas­ter’s earth life. Je­sus him­self one­time pub­licly de­nied any con­nec­tion with the royal house of David. Even the pas­sage, “a maiden shall bear a son,” was made to read, “a vir­gin shall bear a son.” This was also true of the many ge­nealo­gies of both Joseph and Mary which were con­structed sub­se­quent to Mi­chael’s ca­reer on earth. Many of these lin­eages con­tain much of the Mas­ter’s an­ces­try, but on the whole they are not gen­uine and may not be de­pended upon as fac­tual. The early fol­low­ers of Je­sus all too of­ten suc­cumbed to the temp­ta­tion to make all the olden pro­phetic ut­ter­ances ap­pear to find ful­fill­ment in the life of their Lord and Mas­ter.

• ever-sunny disposition

122:5.2Mary’s tem­per­a­ment was quite op­po­site to that of her hus­band. She was usu­ally cheer­ful, was very rarely down­cast, and pos­sessed an ever-sunny dis­po­si­tion. Mary in­dulged in free and fre­quent ex­pres­sion of her emo­tional feel­ings and was never ob­served to be sor­row­ful un­til af­ter the sud­den death of Joseph. And she had hardly re­cov­ered from this shock when she had thrust upon her the anx­i­eties and ques­tion­ings aroused by the ex­traor­di­nary ca­reer of her el­dest son, which was so rapidly un­fold­ing be­fore her as­ton­ished gaze. But through­out all this un­usual ex­pe­ri­ence Mary was com­posed, coura­geous, and fairly wise in her re­la­tion­ship with her strange and lit­tle-un­der­stood first-born son and his sur­viv­ing broth­ers and sis­ters.

• brown-eyed well-nigh blond
• educated far above average

122:5.5The fam­i­lies of both Joseph and Mary were well ed­u­cated for their time. Joseph and Mary were ed­u­cated far above the av­er­age for their day and sta­tion in life. He was a thinker; she was a plan­ner, ex­pert in adap­ta­tion and prac­ti­cal in im­me­di­ate ex­e­cu­tion. Joseph was a black-eyed brunet; Mary, a brown-eyed well-nigh blond type.

• expert weaver, homemaker

122:5.7Mary was an ex­pert weaver and more than av­er­agely skilled in most of the house­hold arts of that day; she was a good house­keeper and a su­pe­rior home­maker. Both Joseph and Mary were good teach­ers, and they saw to it that their chil­dren were well versed in the learn­ing of that day.

• seriously ill with birth of Jude

124:3.4On Wednes­day evening, June 24, A.D. 5, Jude was born. Com­pli­ca­tions at­tended the birth of this, the sev­enth child. Mary was so very ill for sev­eral weeks that Joseph re­mained at home. Je­sus was very much oc­cu­pied with er­rands for his fa­ther and with many du­ties oc­ca­sioned by his mother’s se­ri­ous ill­ness. Never again did this youth find it pos­si­ble to re­turn to the child­like at­ti­tude of his ear­lier years. From the time of his mother’s ill­ness—just be­fore he was eleven years old—he was com­pelled to as­sume the re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of the first-born son and to do all this one or two full years be­fore these bur­dens should nor­mally have fallen on his shoul­ders.

• died in year following crucifixion

187:2.7The Apos­tle John, with Mary the mother of Je­sus, Ruth, and Jude, ar­rived on the scene just af­ter Je­sus had been hoisted to his po­si­tion on the cross, and just as the cap­tain was nail­ing the ti­tle above the Mas­ter’s head. John was the only one of the eleven apos­tles to wit­ness the cru­ci­fix­ion, and even he was not pres­ent all of the time since he ran into Je­ru­sa­lem to bring back his mother and her friends soon af­ter he had brought Je­sus’ mother to the scene.

122:3.1One evening about sun­down, be­fore Joseph had re­turned home, Ga­briel ap­peared to Mary by the side of a low stone ta­ble and, af­ter she had re­cov­ered her com­po­sure, said: “I come at the bid­ding of one who is my Mas­ter and whom you shall love and nur­ture. To you, Mary, I bring glad tid­ings when I an­nounce that the con­cep­tion within you is or­dained by heaven, and that in due time you will be­come the mother of a son; you shall call him Joshua, and he shall in­au­gu­rate the king­dom of heaven on earth and among men. Speak not of this mat­ter save to Joseph and to Eliz­a­beth, your kinswoman, to whom I have also ap­peared, and who shall pres­ently also bear a son, whose name shall be John, and who will pre­pare the way for the mes­sage of de­liv­er­ance which your son shall pro­claim to men with great power and deep con­vic­tion. And doubt not my word, Mary, for this home has been cho­sen as the mor­tal habi­tat of the child of des­tiny. My bene­dic­tion rests upon you, the power of the Most Highs will strengthen you, and the Lord of all the earth shall over­shadow you.”

122:3.2Mary pon­dered this vis­i­ta­tion se­cretly in her heart for many weeks un­til of a cer­tainty she knew she was with child, be­fore she dared to dis­close these un­usual events to her hus­band. When Joseph heard all about this, al­though he had great con­fi­dence in Mary, he was much trou­bled and could not sleep for many nights. At first Joseph had doubts about the Ga­briel vis­i­ta­tion. Then when he be­came well-nigh per­suaded that Mary had re­ally heard the voice and be­held the form of the di­vine mes­sen­ger, he was torn in mind as he pon­dered how such things could be. How could the off­spring of hu­man be­ings be a child of di­vine des­tiny? Never could Joseph rec­on­cile these con­flict­ing ideas un­til, af­ter sev­eral weeks of thought, both he and Mary reached the con­clu­sion that they had been cho­sen to be­come the par­ents of the Mes­siah, though it had hardly been the Jew­ish con­cept that the ex­pected de­liv­erer was to be of di­vine na­ture. Upon ar­riv­ing at this mo­men­tous con­clu­sion, Mary has­tened to de­part for a visit with Eliz­a­beth.

122:3.4Ga­briel’s an­nounce­ment to Mary was made the day fol­low­ing the con­cep­tion of Je­sus and was the only event of super­nat­u­ral oc­cur­rence con­nected with her en­tire ex­pe­ri­ence of car­ry­ing and bear­ing the child of prom­ise.

122:8.1All that night Mary was rest­less so that nei­ther of them slept much. By the break of day the pangs of child­birth were well in ev­i­dence, and at noon, Au­gust 21, 7 B.C., with the help and kind min­is­tra­tions of women fel­low trav­el­ers, Mary was de­liv­ered of a male child. Je­sus of Naz­a­reth was born into the world, was wrapped in the clothes which Mary had brought along for such a pos­si­ble con­tin­gency, and laid in a near-by manger.

122:8.2In just the same man­ner as all ba­bies be­fore that day and since have come into the world, the prom­ised child was born; and on the eighth day, ac­cord­ing to the Jew­ish prac­tice, he was cir­cum­cised and for­mally named Joshua (Je­sus).

122:8.3The next day af­ter the birth of Je­sus, Joseph made his en­roll­ment. Meet­ing a man they had talked with two nights pre­vi­ously at Jeri­cho, Joseph was taken by him to a well-to-do friend who had a room at the inn, and who said he would gladly ex­change quar­ters with the Naz­a­reth cou­ple. That af­ter­noon they moved up to the inn, where they lived for al­most three weeks un­til they found lodg­ings in the home of a dis­tant rel­a­tive of Joseph.

122:8.5At the noon­tide birth of Je­sus the ser­a­phim of Uran­tia, as­sem­bled un­der their di­rec­tors, did sing an­thems of glory over the Beth­le­hem manger, but these ut­ter­ances of praise were not heard by hu­man ears. No shep­herds nor any other mor­tal crea­tures came to pay homage to the babe of Beth­le­hem un­til the day of the ar­rival of cer­tain priests from Ur, who were sent down from Je­ru­sa­lem by Zach­a­rias.

122:8.6These priests from Mes­o­po­ta­mia had been told some­time be­fore by a strange re­li­gious teacher of their coun­try that he had had a dream in which he was in­formed that “the light of life” was about to ap­pear on earth as a babe and among the Jews. And thither went these three teach­ers look­ing for this “light of life.” Af­ter many weeks of fu­tile search in Je­ru­sa­lem, they were about to re­turn to Ur when Zach­a­rias met them and dis­closed his be­lief that Je­sus was the ob­ject of their quest and sent them on to Beth­le­hem, where they found the babe and left their gifts with Mary, his earth mother. The babe was al­most three weeks old at the time of their visit.

122:8.7These wise men saw no star to guide them to Beth­le­hem. The beau­ti­ful leg­end of the star of Beth­le­hem orig­i­nated in this way: Je­sus was born Au­gust 21 at noon, 7 B.C. On May 29, 7 B.C., there oc­curred an ex­traor­di­nary con­junc­tion of Jupiter and Sat­urn in the con­stel­la­tion of Pisces. And it is a re­mark­able as­tro­nomic fact that sim­i­lar con­junc­tions oc­curred on Septem­ber 29 and De­cem­ber 5 of the same year. Upon the ba­sis of these ex­traor­di­nary but wholly nat­u­ral events the well-mean­ing zealots of the suc­ceed­ing gen­er­a­tion con­structed the ap­peal­ing leg­end of the star of Beth­le­hem and the ador­ing Magi led thereby to the manger, where they be­held and wor­shiped the new­born babe. Ori­en­tal and near-Ori­en­tal minds de­light in fairy sto­ries, and they are con­tin­u­ally spin­ning such beau­ti­ful myths about the lives of their re­li­gious lead­ers and po­lit­i­cal heroes. In the ab­sence of print­ing, when most hu­man knowl­edge was passed by word of mouth from one gen­er­a­tion to an­other, it was very easy for myths to be­come tra­di­tions and for tra­di­tions even­tu­ally to be­come ac­cepted as facts.

137:4.1By noon on Wednes­day al­most a thou­sand guests had ar­rived in Cana, more than four times the num­ber bid­den to the wed­ding feast. It was a Jew­ish cus­tom to cel­e­brate wed­dings on Wednes­day, and the in­vi­ta­tions had been sent abroad for the wed­ding one month pre­vi­ously. In the forenoon and early af­ter­noon it ap­peared more like a pub­lic re­cep­tion for Je­sus than a wed­ding. Ev­ery­body wanted to greet this near-fa­mous Galilean, and he was most cor­dial to all, young and old, Jew and gen­tile. And ev­ery­body re­joiced when Je­sus con­sented to lead the pre­lim­i­nary wed­ding pro­ces­sion.

137:4.2Je­sus was now thor­oughly self-con­scious re­gard­ing his hu­man ex­is­tence, his di­vine pre-ex­is­tence, and the sta­tus of his com­bined, or fused, hu­man and di­vine na­tures. With per­fect poise he could at one mo­ment en­act the hu­man role or im­me­di­ately as­sume the per­son­al­ity pre­rog­a­tives of the di­vine na­ture.

137:4.3As the day wore on, Je­sus be­came in­creas­ingly con­scious that the peo­ple were ex­pect­ing him to per­form some won­der; more es­pe­cially he rec­og­nized that his fam­ily and his six dis­ci­ple-apos­tles were look­ing for him ap­pro­pri­ately to an­nounce his forth­com­ing king­dom by some startling and super­nat­u­ral man­i­fes­ta­tion.

137:4.4Early in the af­ter­noon Mary sum­moned James, and to­gether they made bold to ap­proach Je­sus to in­quire if he would ad­mit them to his con­fi­dence to the ex­tent of in­form­ing them at what hour and at what point in con­nec­tion with the wed­ding cer­e­monies he had planned to man­i­fest him­self as the “super­nat­u­ral one.” No sooner had they spo­ken of these mat­ters to Je­sus than they saw they had aroused his char­ac­ter­is­tic in­dig­na­tion. He said only: “If you love me, then be will­ing to tarry with me while I wait upon the will of my Fa­ther who is in heaven.” But the elo­quence of his re­buke lay in the ex­pres­sion of his face.

137:4.5This move of his mother was a great dis­ap­point­ment to the hu­man Je­sus, and he was much sobered by his re­ac­tion to her sug­ges­tive pro­posal that he per­mit him­self to in­dulge in some out­ward dem­on­stra­tion of his di­vin­ity. That was one of the very things he had de­cided not to do when so re­cently iso­lated in the hills. For sev­eral hours Mary was much de­pressed. She said to James: “I can­not un­der­stand him; what can it all mean? Is there no end to his strange con­duct?” James and Jude tried to com­fort their mother, while Je­sus with­drew for an hour’s soli­tude. But he re­turned to the gath­er­ing and was once more light­hearted and joy­ous.

137:4.6The wed­ding pro­ceeded with a hush of ex­pectancy, but the en­tire cer­e­mony was fin­ished and not a move, not a word, from the hon­ored guest. Then it was whis­pered about that the car­pen­ter and boat­builder, an­nounced by John as “the De­liv­erer,” would show his hand dur­ing the evening fes­tiv­i­ties, per­haps at the wed­ding sup­per. But all ex­pectance of such a dem­on­stra­tion was ef­fec­tu­ally re­moved from the minds of his six dis­ci­ple-apos­tles when he called them to­gether just be­fore the wed­ding sup­per and, in great earnest­ness, said: “Think not that I have come to this place to work some won­der for the grat­i­fi­ca­tion of the cu­ri­ous or for the con­vic­tion of those who doubt. Rather are we here to wait upon the will of our Fa­ther who is in heaven.” But when Mary and the oth­ers saw him in con­sul­ta­tion with his as­so­ciates, they were fully per­suaded in their own minds that some­thing ex­traor­di­nary was about to hap­pen. And they all sat down to en­joy the wed­ding sup­per and the evening of fes­tive good fel­low­ship.

137:4.7The fa­ther of the bride­groom had pro­vided plenty of wine for all the guests bid­den to the mar­riage feast, but how was he to know that the mar­riage of his son was to be­come an event so closely as­so­ci­ated with the ex­pected man­i­fes­ta­tion of Je­sus as the Mes­sianic de­liv­erer? He was de­lighted to have the honor of num­ber­ing the cel­e­brated Galilean among his guests, but be­fore the wed­ding sup­per was over, the ser­vants brought him the dis­con­cert­ing news that the wine was run­ning short. By the time the for­mal sup­per had ended and the guests were strolling about in the gar­den, the mother of the bride­groom con­fided to Mary that the sup­ply of wine was ex­hausted. And Mary con­fi­dently said: “Have no worry—I will speak to my son. He will help us.” And thus did she pre­sume to speak, not­with­stand­ing the re­buke of but a few hours be­fore.

137:4.9Mary the mother of Je­sus was crushed; she was stunned! As she stood there be­fore him mo­tion­less, with the tears stream­ing down her face, the hu­man heart of Je­sus was over­come with com­pas­sion for the woman who had borne him in the flesh; and bend­ing for­ward, he laid his hand ten­derly upon her head, say­ing: “Now, now, Mother Mary, grieve not over my ap­par­ently hard say­ings, for have I not many times told you that I have come only to do the will of my heav­enly Fa­ther? Most gladly would I do what you ask of me if it were a part of the Fa­ther’s will—” and Je­sus stopped short, he hes­i­tated. Mary seemed to sense that some­thing was hap­pen­ing. Leap­ing up, she threw her arms around Je­sus’ neck, kissed him, and rushed off to the ser­vants’ quar­ters, say­ing, “What­ever my son says, that do.” But Je­sus said noth­ing. He now re­al­ized that he had al­ready said—or rather de­sire­fully thought—too much.

137:4.10Mary was danc­ing with glee. She did not know how the wine would be pro­duced, but she con­fi­dently be­lieved that she had fi­nally per­suaded her first-born son to as­sert his au­thor­ity, to dare to step forth and claim his po­si­tion and ex­hibit his Mes­sianic power. And, be­cause of the pres­ence and as­so­ci­a­tion of cer­tain uni­verse pow­ers and per­son­al­i­ties, of which all those pres­ent were wholly ig­no­rant, she was not to be dis­ap­pointed. The wine Mary de­sired and which Je­sus, the God-man, hu­manly and sym­pa­thet­i­cally wished for, was forth­com­ing.

137:4.11Near at hand stood six wa­ter­pots of stone, filled with wa­ter, hold­ing about twenty gal­lons apiece. This wa­ter was in­tended for sub­se­quent use in the fi­nal pu­rifi­ca­tion cer­e­monies of the wed­ding cel­e­bra­tion. The com­mo­tion of the ser­vants about these huge stone ves­sels, un­der the busy di­rec­tion of his mother, at­tracted Je­sus’ at­ten­tion, and go­ing over, he ob­served that they were draw­ing wine out of them by the pitcher­ful.

137:4.12It was grad­u­ally dawn­ing upon Je­sus what had hap­pened. Of all per­sons pres­ent at the mar­riage feast of Cana, Je­sus was the most sur­prised. Oth­ers had ex­pected him to work a won­der, but that was just what he had pur­posed not to do. And then the Son of Man re­called the ad­mo­ni­tion of his Per­son­al­ized Thought Ad­juster in the hills. He re­counted how the Ad­juster had warned him about the in­abil­ity of any power or per­son­al­ity to de­prive him of the cre­ator pre­rog­a­tive of in­de­pen­dence of time. On this oc­ca­sion power trans­form­ers, mid­way­ers, and all other re­quired per­son­al­i­ties were as­sem­bled near the wa­ter and other nec­es­sary el­e­ments, and in the face of the ex­pressed wish of the Uni­verse Cre­ator Sov­er­eign, there was no es­cap­ing the in­stan­ta­neous ap­pear­ance of wine. And this oc­cur­rence was made dou­bly cer­tain since the Per­son­al­ized Ad­juster had sig­ni­fied that the ex­e­cu­tion of the Son’s de­sire was in no way a con­tra­ven­tion of the Fa­ther’s will.

137:4.13But this was in no sense a mir­a­cle. No law of na­ture was mod­i­fied, ab­ro­gated, or even tran­scended. Noth­ing hap­pened but the ab­ro­ga­tion of time in as­so­ci­a­tion with the ce­les­tial as­sem­bly of the chem­i­cal el­e­ments req­ui­site for the elab­o­ra­tion of the wine. At Cana on this oc­ca­sion the agents of the Cre­ator made wine just as they do by the or­di­nary nat­u­ral pro­cesses ex­cept that they did it in­de­pen­dently of time and with the in­ter­ven­tion of super­hu­man agen­cies in the mat­ter of the space as­sem­bly of the nec­es­sary chem­i­cal in­gre­di­ents.

137:4.14Fur­ther­more it was ev­i­dent that the en­act­ment of this so-called mir­a­cle was not con­trary to the will of the Par­a­dise Fa­ther, else it would not have tran­spired, since Je­sus had al­ready sub­jected him­self in all things to the Fa­ther’s will.

137:4.15When the ser­vants drew this new wine and car­ried it to the best man, the “ruler of the feast,” and when he had tasted it, he called to the bride­groom, say­ing: “It is the cus­tom to set out first the good wine and, when the guests have well drunk, to bring forth the in­fe­rior fruit of the vine; but you have kept the best of the wine un­til the last of the feast.”

137:4.16Mary and the dis­ci­ples of Je­sus were greatly re­joiced at the sup­posed mir­a­cle which they thought Je­sus had in­ten­tion­ally per­formed, but Je­sus with­drew to a shel­tered nook of the gar­den and en­gaged in se­ri­ous thought for a few brief mo­ments. He fi­nally de­cided that the episode was be­yond his per­sonal con­trol un­der the cir­cum­stances and, not be­ing ad­verse to his Fa­ther’s will, was in­ev­i­ta­ble. When he re­turned to the peo­ple, they re­garded him with awe; they all be­lieved in him as the Mes­siah. But Je­sus was sorely per­plexed, know­ing that they be­lieved in him only be­cause of the un­usual oc­cur­rence which they had just in­ad­ver­tently be­held. Again Je­sus re­tired for a sea­son to the house­top that he might think it all over.

137:4.17Je­sus now fully com­pre­hended that he must con­stantly be on guard lest his in­dul­gence of sym­pa­thy and pity be­come re­spon­si­ble for re­peated episodes of this sort. Nev­er­the­less, many sim­i­lar events oc­curred be­fore the Son of Man took fi­nal leave of his mor­tal life in the flesh.

• Golgotha, crucifixion

187:4.7Just af­ter the re­pen­tant thief heard the Mas­ter’s prom­ise that they should some­time meet in Par­a­dise, John re­turned from the city, bring­ing with him his mother and a com­pany of al­most a dozen women be­liev­ers. John took up his po­si­tion near Mary the mother of Je­sus, sup­port­ing her. Her son Jude stood on the other side. As Je­sus looked down upon this scene, it was noon­tide, and he said to his mother, “Woman, be­hold your son!” And speak­ing to John, he said, “My son, be­hold your mother!” And then he ad­dressed them both, say­ing, “I de­sire that you de­part from this place.” And so John and Jude led Mary away from Gol­go­tha. John took the mother of Je­sus to the place where he tar­ried in Je­ru­sa­lem and then has­tened back to the scene of the cru­ci­fix­ion. Af­ter the Pass­over Mary re­turned to Beth­saida, where she lived at John’s home for the rest of her nat­u­ral life. Mary did not live quite one year af­ter the death of Je­sus.

• Jesus’ 4th morontia appearance

190:2.6And David did not long wait, for the fourth ap­pear­ance of Je­sus to mor­tal rec­og­ni­tion oc­curred shortly be­fore two o’clock in this very home of Martha and Mary, when he ap­peared vis­i­bly be­fore his earthly fam­ily and their friends, twenty in all. The Mas­ter ap­peared in the open back door, say­ing: “Peace be upon you. Greet­ings to those once near me in the flesh and fel­low­ship for my broth­ers and sis­ters in the king­dom of heaven. How could you doubt? Why have you lin­gered so long be­fore choos­ing to fol­low the light of truth with a whole heart? Come, there­fore, all of you into the fel­low­ship of the Spirit of Truth in the Fa­ther’s king­dom.” As they be­gan to re­cover from the first shock of their amaze­ment and to move to­ward him as if to em­brace him, he van­ished from their sight.

• upper room at Pentecost

193:6.1Act­ing upon the in­struc­tion of Pe­ter, John Mark and oth­ers went forth to call the lead­ing dis­ci­ples to­gether at the home of Mary Mark. By ten thirty, one hun­dred and twenty of the fore­most dis­ci­ples of Je­sus liv­ing in Je­ru­sa­lem had for­gath­ered to hear the re­port of the farewell mes­sage of the Mas­ter and to learn of his as­cen­sion. Among this com­pany was Mary the mother of Je­sus. She had re­turned to Je­ru­sa­lem with John Zeb­e­dee when the apos­tles came back from their re­cent so­journ in Gal­i­lee. Soon af­ter Pen­te­cost she re­turned to the home of Sa­lome at Beth­saida. James the brother of Je­sus was also pres­ent at this meet­ing, the first con­fer­ence of the Mas­ter’s dis­ci­ples to be called af­ter the ter­mi­na­tion of his plan­e­tary ca­reer.

• upper room at Pentecost

194:3.15Both the mother and brother of Je­sus were pres­ent among the one hun­dred and twenty be­liev­ers, and as mem­bers of this com­mon group of dis­ci­ples, they also re­ceived the out­poured spirit. They re­ceived no more of the good gift than did their fel­lows. No spe­cial gift was be­stowed upon the mem­bers of Je­sus’ earthly fam­ily. Pen­te­cost marked the end of spe­cial priest­hoods and all be­lief in sa­cred fam­i­lies.

190:1.10In about one week from this time John Zeb­e­dee took Mary the mother of Je­sus to his home in Beth­saida. James, Je­sus’ el­dest brother, re­mained with his fam­ily in Je­ru­sa­lem. Ruth re­mained at Beth­any with Laz­a­rus’s sis­ters. The rest of Je­sus’ fam­ily re­turned to Gal­i­lee. David Zeb­e­dee left Beth­any with Martha and Mary, for Phil­a­del­phia, early in June, the day af­ter his mar­riage to Ruth, Je­sus’ young­est sis­ter.