Q. We recently celebrated the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Aug. 15). I attended the Vigil Mass the night before, and the Gospel reading from Luke 11:27-28 was so confusing to me. It sounds like Jesus is correcting the woman in the crowd who compliments his mother. My Protestant friends often point out those verses to argue that we Catholics shouldn’t give so much honor to Mary. Help?
A. You’re not alone in finding yourself challenged by this sort of passage in the Bible. I’m a convert myself, and numerous of my friends in the years leading up to and even long after my conversion have played back this and other similar verses to me. Let’s look at it.
Luke 11:27-28 reads: “While Jesus 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.’”
It may seem ironic that these particular verses were chosen to celebrate God’s assumption of Mary into Heaven, because, as you say, it appears to many readers that Jesus is contradicting the woman venerating Mary—as if she’s got the wrong idea; that her adoration is misplaced and excessive.
It’s that word ‘rather’ in verse 28. What to make of it? It translates the Greek ‘menoun’ (meh-noon), and here’s where it gets interesting. In Greek, menoun belongs to a category of words we call ‘particles’ that work a bit differently from the way we normally understand them in English.
Think of particles as “useful tools” or “markers” or “signposts” that direct attention more specifically, or emphasize certain things within a sentence—such as we do when we use italics. One standard Greek-English dictionary explains that the particle menoun is used especially in dialogue responses to emphasize or correct, and it cites our verses above in Luke 11 as an example. Sadly, the dictionary stops short before it clarifies whether Jesus is using menoun to emphasize what the woman has said, or to correct it.
Another reputable dictionary elaborates a bit more: menoun can mark contrast (e.g., ‘on the contrary’), but it can also mark the result of a process of reasoning (e.g., ‘therefore’; ‘consequently’). When used to mark emphasis, it does so more energetically than other alternatives. So menoun could mean something like ‘surely’ or ‘certainly’ or ‘indeed.’
In light of this last point, it’s intriguing to me that the CJB (Complete Jewish Bible) has rendered verse 28: “But he said, ‘Far more blessed are those who hear the word of God and obey it!’” Notice the word ‘rather’ is missing. That’s because the CJB has taken the Greek word menoun as an emphasizer—and emphatically so.
Now, clearly Jesus is directing the perspective of his audience (‘the crowd’) beyond what the woman has said. But it does not follow from this that he is thereby contradicting her. When my wife compliments my daughter’s intelligence and even-mindedness for performing well on a test and scoring highly, and I say, “Even more excellent than that is the one who listened carefully to her teachers and studied the material thoroughly,” I’ve said nothing that undoes in any way what my wife has said. In fact I’m describing the same person my wife is describing, but with different words.
So here in Luke 11:27-28, Jesus does not contradict the woman as though she has spoken errantly. She is more like the “star student” in the “class” Jesus is teaching who has just put her finger on a key point the “professor” wishes to use to make an even larger point.
For, as I recall the incisive point Father David Tines made, putting rhetorical questions to good use in his homily at St. Peter here in Lincoln on this very text (yes, I attended the Vigil as well), “Who, more than Mary, ‘heard’ the word of God as it came to her through the angel Gabriel? And who, more than Mary, ‘observed’ God’s words [i.e., ‘kept,’ ‘obeyed,’ ‘lived out’]?”
Well, no one.
It makes better sense of the whole story of Jesus and Mary to understand the way Jesus is using menoun [‘rather’] in Luke 11:27-28 not as a contradiction, but as an amplification of veneration which points to a deeper reality that supports the compliment the woman has paid to Jesus’ mother.
This question was answered by Chad Steiner, director of academics at the Emmaus Institute for Biblical Studies in Lincoln. For more information about courses and other learning opportunities with the Institute, visit emmausinstitute.net.
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