John 19:25-27

CARE OF JESUS FOR HIS MOTHER

John 19:25-27. “ His mother and the sister of His mother, Mary the mother of Clopas do not identify the sister of our Savior ' s mother with Mary the mother of Clopas, as in that case there would be two sisters in one family by the name of Mary, and Mary Magdalen are standing by. Then Jesus, seeing His mother, and the disciple whom He loved standing by, says to His mother, Woman, behold thy son! Then He says to the disciple, Behold thy mother! And from that hour that disciple took her to his own home.” Though Mary had four sons besides Jesus Simon, Judas, James, and Joses, who are believed by Roman Catholics to be the sons of Joseph by a former marriage, but all the facts in the case decidedly favoring the conclusion that they were her own sons, younger than Jesus and we also read about the sisters of Jesus in Nazareth, who were evidently her daughters, yet we see Jesus commits her to the Apostle John for safekeeping, confirmatory of the fact that the consanguinity of the Spirit is stronger and dearer than that of the flesh. Doubtless John was the most loving man in the world at that time, this being the reason why Jesus honored him with the custodianship of His mother. You see how John at that very hour took charge of her, under the expiring eye of her Divine Son. You see here that Jesus does not salute her by the endearing epithet “mother;” illustrating the consolatory fact that He is not a member of any isolated family to the exclusion of the rest of mankind; but, as He uniformly called Himself, “The Son of man” i. e., the Son of humanity representing the whole human race, everybody's Brother in the common consanguinity of a universal blood brotherhood.