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Okay, you asked for it.

The woman praises, honors, His Mother, just because she is his Mother, because that’s her way of saying, Hey, Jesus, you are Something Special, you are really Great, which means that your mother is to be honored PRECISELY for YOUR (Jesus’) sake.

Jesus says, “Yes, indeed, but more than that, everyone who hears the word of God and keeps it is blessed.”

Now, Luke went out of his way to portray Mary as the one who more than anyone else heard the word of God and kept it. She kept it by obeying it. She kept it by being the first to believe in the Incarnation, being the first human to know about it. She kept the Word hidden beneath heart as the tiny Baby who was God Incarnate. She kept the Word up one side and down the other. She heard the Word, she was the first to Hear the Gospel, the Good News of the Birth of the Messiah. She heard the Word and kept it.

Now, if Luke has put all that stuff earlier in Luke, don’t you just kinda sorta think that maybe just perhaps Luke wanted you, dear reader, to notice the connection?

See, in the old days, writers like to be a tad subtle. They liked to insert little connections that were clear but a bit hidden so that you, Dear Reader, could delight in discovering them.

This is classic Christian exegesis, practiced by all the great exegetes of the Church over many centuries. It was practiced by Jewish exegetes before the Christians.

So, when Jesus said, “Yes, indeed, lady, the woman that bore me and her nursing breasts deserve honor, not just because she is my mother, though she is that and as such deserves your honor, but also and more importantly, because she heard the word of God and kept it, and you, dear lady and others can do that to” the people around him didn’t say, “Hey man, don’t give his Mother the slightest honor whatsoever or Jesus will slap you upside the head.”

No, they “got it.”

And before you object that Jesus began by saying “No, lady,” look up the Greek word. It’s used to mean, “Yes, rather” or “Yes indeed but more than that”
more often that it’s used to mean “No, on the contrary.”

If you want to insist that it means “On the contrary,” you are free to do so. But I have all the intertextual evidence supporting my reading and the sheer philological evidence can go either way.

By ALL the rules of standard exegesis, my reading makes more sense. And thus it has been interpreted for centuries.

Besides, can God Incarnate forbid a woman from honoring his mother when the Ten Commandments obligate him to honor her? Could any reasonable person think he is saying to the woman, “No, on the contrary, my mother is not blessed and the breasts that nursed me are not blessed.” All of us should be saying that about our own mothers, on pain of violating God’s law. Would Jesus do any less than keep the law? You cannot reasonably interpret this as “No, on the contrary.”