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NOTES for Mar 3:13-19

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13 And he goeth up into a mountain, and calleth unto him whom he would: and they came unto him.
14 And he ordained twelve, that they should be with him, and that he might send them forth to preach,
15 And to have power to heal sicknesses, and to cast out devils:
16 And Simon he surnamed Peter;
17 And James the son of Zebedee, and John the brother of James; and he surnamed them Boanerges, which is, The sons of thunder:
18 And Andrew, and Philip, and Bartholomew, and Matthew, and Thomas, and James the son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus, and Simon the Canaanite,
19 And Judas Iscariot, which also betrayed him: and they went into an house.
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It is interesting: at what moment do the apostles actually become apostles? At the moment when Jesus called them to follow Him, each in his own hour? On the day when He sends them out for ministry? After His resurrection and their meeting with Him, risen from the dead? On the day of Pentecost? It is probably impossible to give a single answer to this question. After all, an apostle is above all a witness, a witness of Christ and of the Kingdom. That means he becomes an apostle at the moment when he begins to bear witness. And what should be counted as the beginning? In essence, the apostles fully understood what the Kingdom was only after Pentecost, when they experienced its breath upon themselves. But they became witnesses much earlier. In a certain sense, their very readiness to follow Jesus immediately after He called them can already be considered a witness.

Of course, the moment when Jesus sends His twelve closest disciples out to preach really does become a turning point on their spiritual path. Before that, they bore witness by their very presence beside the Teacher, by the support they gave Him. Now they had to give independent witness, to walk their own path, certainly connected with the earthly path of their Teacher, but still their own. At the same time, of course, the question arises by itself: how could the apostles bear witness to the Kingdom, which they truly came to know much later, after the Resurrection and Pentecost?

Here, as we can see, one of the fundamental patterns of spiritual life shows itself, as spiritual life exists in our world that is being transformed but has not yet been transformed, and perhaps not only here. The point is that in spiritual life what might conditionally be called training and, just as conditionally, practice exist inseparably. Spiritual life and practice cannot be learned the way we learn one specialty or another in a secondary school or university, so that after finishing the course we then begin work. There is not even the practical internship familiar in such schools. One has to work, so to speak, directly on the job from the very beginning, learning without leaving it. Such learning can sometimes appear too difficult and even risky, but this appears to be the only possibility, at least in our fallen world. And Jesus teaches His disciples exactly this way: on the road to the Kingdom. So that when they arrive there, they will already know and be able to do everything they need. At least at first.

Other notes

 
For Mar 3:13-19
13 And he goeth up into a mountain, and calleth unto him whom he would: and they came unto him.
14 And he ordained twelve, that they should be with him, and that he might send them forth to preach,
15 And to have power to heal sicknesses, and to cast out devils:
16 And Simon he surnamed Peter;
17 And James the son of Zebedee, and John the brother of James; and he surnamed them Boanerges, which is, The sons of thunder:
18 And Andrew, and Philip, and Bartholomew, and Matthew, and Thomas, and James the son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus, and Simon the Canaanite,
19 And Judas Iscariot, which also betrayed him: and they went into an house.
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Many people walked the roads of Palestine after Jesus, but not all of them entered...  Read more

Many people walked the roads of Palestine after Jesus, but not all of them were included among the twelve apostles. As the evangelist Mark says, He "called to Him those whom He Himself wanted." The Lord prepared these disciples for ministry, giving them power to preach the Kingdom of God, heal the sick, and cast out demons. Having followed Christ's call and gone up the mountain with Him, they became completely different people. Is this not what is shown by the fact that Simon is given a completely new name: Peter...

Having received these "supernatural" abilities, the apostles did not turn into magicians proud of their wonder-working skills, because none of this was their achievement. Jesus called those He wanted, not those who were more worthy. The astonishing things done by the hands of the apostles, which we find in the book of Acts, are the action of the Savior Himself, not of those whom He Himself appointed to this ministry. This relationship between the Lord and the disciples is an amazing example for us of what humility is.

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For Mar 3:13-15
13 And he goeth up into a mountain, and calleth unto him whom he would: and they came unto him.
14 And he ordained twelve, that they should be with him, and that he might send them forth to preach,
15 And to have power to heal sicknesses, and to cast out devils:
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The Lord, descending to earth in His self-emptying, limits Himself in His actions to human possibilities. There is simply not enough of Him for everyone...  Read more

The Lord, descending to earth in His self-emptying, limits Himself in His actions to human possibilities. There is simply not enough of Him for everyone; He is not able to heal everyone who wants healing, or to tell about the Kingdom of God to everyone who is ready to hear His good news. Therefore He calls disciples to Himself for help - He will send them to preach the Gospel, heal diseases, and cast out evil spirits. He Himself chooses them for this ministry and gives them new names, as His servants and envoys. Later, the Twelve will become the foundation for His Church.

It is essential for us that Christ's disciples are not merely adherents of a new teaching, participants in certain spiritual practices, or keepers of particular mysteries and rituals, but messengers (Greek: apostles) of their Teacher, called to carry out His ministry - with Him and for Him. There is enough suffering and injustice in the world for us to fulfill our mission: to make the world a little better, a little more open to God's love, and to bring a particle of His presence. This is exactly what makes us true disciples of Christ.

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For Mar 3:13-35
13 And he goeth up into a mountain, and calleth unto him whom he would: and they came unto him.
14 And he ordained twelve, that they should be with him, and that he might send them forth to preach,
15 And to have power to heal sicknesses, and to cast out devils:
16 And Simon he surnamed Peter;
17 And James the son of Zebedee, and John the brother of James; and he surnamed them Boanerges, which is, The sons of thunder:
18 And Andrew, and Philip, and Bartholomew, and Matthew, and Thomas, and James the son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus, and Simon the Canaanite,
19 And Judas Iscariot, which also betrayed him: and they went into an house.
20 And the multitude cometh together again, so that they could not so much as eat bread.
21 And when his friends heard of it, they went out to lay hold on him: for they said, He is beside himself.
22 And the scribes which came down from Jerusalem said, He hath Beelzebub, and by the prince of the devils casteth he out devils.
23 And he called them unto him, and said unto them in parables, How can Satan cast out Satan?
24 And if a kingdom be divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand.
25 And if a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand.
26 And if Satan rise up against himself, and be divided, he cannot stand, but hath an end.
27 No man can enter into a strong man's house, and spoil his goods, except he will first bind the strong man; and then he will spoil his house.
28 Verily I say unto you, All sins shall be forgiven unto the sons of men, and blasphemies wherewith soever they shall blaspheme:
29 But he that shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost hath never forgiveness, but is in danger of eternal damnation:
30 Because they said, He hath an unclean spirit.
31 There came then his brethren and his mother, and, standing without, sent unto him, calling him.
32 And the multitude sat about him, and they said unto him, Behold, thy mother and thy brethren without seek for thee.
33 And he answered them, saying, Who is my mother, or my brethren?
34 And he looked round about on them which sat about him, and said, Behold my mother and my brethren!
35 For whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother, and my sister, and mother.
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The human mind is resourceful; this has been known long and well. So has the fact that it is the greatest flatterer in the world: if a person very much wants to convince himself of something...  Read more

The human mind is resourceful; this has been known long and well. So has the fact that it is the greatest flatterer in the world: if a person very much wants to convince himself of something, prove something to himself, or justify something for himself, his mind is glad to try and please him. It will find the needed arguments and offer such interpretations of perfectly obvious facts that, if the person wants, they will allow him to see those facts as completely different from what they really are. This activity of the human mind turns out to be especially "useful" when certain facts simply refuse to fit within the framework of a scheme, concept, or theory devised by the same human mind.

Something like this happened when certain "scribes" (apparently learned rabbis or teachers of Torah from the Jerusalem academy) began to claim that Jesus supposedly cast out dark spirits by using the power of their own head, the ruler of the world of shadows and the kingdom of death, one of whose names was Beelzebul. The absurdity of such a claim was obvious, and Jesus immediately pointed it out to the scribes: if everything were as they claimed, that would be a tremendous stroke of good fortune, because it would mean that a split had occurred in the kingdom of darkness, so that fighting it would now be quite easy. It was obvious to everyone that nothing of the sort was to be expected.

The scribes simply proposed a theory that could explain what was happening without destroying their own concepts, above all their messianic concepts, and some others as well. This Man, they said, violates the Law given by God (in reality, the prescriptions invented by people and proposed as an interpretation of that very Law given by God); therefore He cannot be a man of God; therefore He cannot heal; and since He nevertheless heals, then... at this point the new theory came in handy: therefore, He heals by the wrong power, not by God's power. The logic is preserved, but it has no relation to reality.

Yet a person who wants to deceive himself tries not to notice this, and truly does not notice it, while the mind helps him remain in ignorance. A person's life is determined not by mind and not by logic, but by will, which compels a person to choose and decide. This includes choosing what he wants to see and what he does not want to see. And seeing what one wants or failing to notice what one does not want is not so hard; when needed, both mind and feelings will help with this. They cannot resist the will, which determines who and what a person will be before God and people.

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For Mar 3:13-35
13 And he goeth up into a mountain, and calleth unto him whom he would: and they came unto him.
14 And he ordained twelve, that they should be with him, and that he might send them forth to preach,
15 And to have power to heal sicknesses, and to cast out devils:
16 And Simon he surnamed Peter;
17 And James the son of Zebedee, and John the brother of James; and he surnamed them Boanerges, which is, The sons of thunder:
18 And Andrew, and Philip, and Bartholomew, and Matthew, and Thomas, and James the son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus, and Simon the Canaanite,
19 And Judas Iscariot, which also betrayed him: and they went into an house.
20 And the multitude cometh together again, so that they could not so much as eat bread.
21 And when his friends heard of it, they went out to lay hold on him: for they said, He is beside himself.
22 And the scribes which came down from Jerusalem said, He hath Beelzebub, and by the prince of the devils casteth he out devils.
23 And he called them unto him, and said unto them in parables, How can Satan cast out Satan?
24 And if a kingdom be divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand.
25 And if a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand.
26 And if Satan rise up against himself, and be divided, he cannot stand, but hath an end.
27 No man can enter into a strong man's house, and spoil his goods, except he will first bind the strong man; and then he will spoil his house.
28 Verily I say unto you, All sins shall be forgiven unto the sons of men, and blasphemies wherewith soever they shall blaspheme:
29 But he that shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost hath never forgiveness, but is in danger of eternal damnation:
30 Because they said, He hath an unclean spirit.
31 There came then his brethren and his mother, and, standing without, sent unto him, calling him.
32 And the multitude sat about him, and they said unto him, Behold, thy mother and thy brethren without seek for thee.
33 And he answered them, saying, Who is my mother, or my brethren?
34 And he looked round about on them which sat about him, and said, Behold my mother and my brethren!
35 For whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother, and my sister, and mother.
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One of the greatest saints of our time, Therese of Lisieux, began writing her autobiographical...  Read more

One of the greatest saints of our time, Therese of Lisieux, began writing her autobiographical notes, "Story of a Soul," by opening the Gospel at random and finding her eyes falling on the very words with which our passage begins: "Then He went up on the mountain and called to Himself those whom He Himself wanted." In her thought, the whole mystery of the calling to holiness is contained in them: "He does not call those who are worthy of it, but those whom He Himself wants."

The whole passage is about the "called" and the "summoned," about the Lord's relationships with those closest to Him. Why does He choose the circle of His closest disciples? Do we have grounds to agree with Therese's words, or are we inwardly convinced that among all the listeners those chosen by Jesus were the worthiest?

In verses 28-29 there is a warning, and one of the sternest in the Gospel. Let us note: it is not Jesus who condemns the scribes. Speaking in parables, He gives them the opportunity to look and test for themselves what from what has been said applies to them. Is not this respect of His for the human conscience the key to what it means to "blaspheme the Holy Spirit"? Every other blasphemy is external: a person may "not know what he is doing." But when he blasphemes the Holy Spirit, he knows, and he does it in spite of what his own conscience is crying out. Is this not why the condemnation proves eternal, because nothing remains in a person that could raise him up?

In the last verses of the third chapter one at first sees a bitter testimony to Jesus' rejection of family ties because His relatives did not understand Him, until one realizes: the Lord does not move away from His relatives, otherwise what value would there be for the disciples in being called His "brother, and sister, and mother"? He shares with those who do the will of God His most personal, most tender, and most caring love.

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For Mar 3:7-19
7 But Jesus withdrew himself with his disciples to the sea: and a great multitude from Galilee followed him, and from Judaea,
8 And from Jerusalem, and from Idumaea, and from beyond Jordan; and they about Tyre and Sidon, a great multitude, when they had heard what great things he did, came unto him.
9 And he spake to his disciples, that a small ship should wait on him because of the multitude, lest they should throng him.
10 For he had healed many; insomuch that they pressed upon him for to touch him, as many as had plagues.
11 And unclean spirits, when they saw him, fell down before him, and cried, saying, Thou art the Son of God.
12 And he straitly charged them that they should not make him known.
13 And he goeth up into a mountain, and calleth unto him whom he would: and they came unto him.
14 And he ordained twelve, that they should be with him, and that he might send them forth to preach,
15 And to have power to heal sicknesses, and to cast out devils:
16 And Simon he surnamed Peter;
17 And James the son of Zebedee, and John the brother of James; and he surnamed them Boanerges, which is, The sons of thunder:
18 And Andrew, and Philip, and Bartholomew, and Matthew, and Thomas, and James the son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus, and Simon the Canaanite,
19 And Judas Iscariot, which also betrayed him: and they went into an house.
Hide
In Mark, the choosing of the apostles is shown as part of the Savior's earthly ministry, His earthly path. The main emphasis is on healings and cleansings, which...  Read more

In Mark, the choosing of the apostles is shown as part of the Savior's earthly ministry, His earthly path. The main emphasis is on healings and cleansings, which is no surprise: healing and liberation from dark powers are the chief manifestations in the fallen world of the Kingdom, of its breath, of its power. Against such a background, the meaning of the apostles' calling and the meaning of their ministry become especially clear.

"Apostle" literally means "messenger." In Gospel times, the ministry of apostles was communal: as a rule, they were representatives of a particular community, sent to others in order to bear witness to something important that had happened in the community that sent them. It could be a miracle, an important prophecy, or in general some event whose spiritual significance went beyond the limits of the community where it had taken place.

In this case, that event was the coming of the Messiah and the fact that the Kingdom, according to His own word, had "drawn near." This Kingdom that had drawn near, ready to enter our world, was the main event that the apostles sent by Jesus were to announce. Words alone, however, were not enough: they had to testify by deed that the Kingdom really was near.

Those deeds were the healings performed by the apostles through the power of their Teacher, for they testified that the power of the Kingdom belongs not only to the One who brought it into the world, but that it can be manifested through everyone who has a share in the Kingdom and its life. If only the Savior Himself could perform miracles and healings, that would mean that He, as the God-man possessing an utterly unique nature, had brought into the world something that could truly belong only to Him and to no one else.

But if His disciples can perform the same miracles and healings, that means they too can become inhabitants of the Kingdom. Of course, according to the measure of their human fullness, they can become like Him and can live one life with Him, a life that will not differ qualitatively from His life. Such a prospect opened the possibility not merely of a person's temporary participation in the life of the Kingdom, but of the complete transformation of human nature itself, which would make a person an inhabitant of the Kingdom not only by participation, but by nature. This means that the Kingdom and its life will be given to man not for a time, but forever.

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