The Gospel passage that describes Jesus’ rejection by his own village of Nazareth is often addressed in homilies for the laity as an opportunity to champion Mary’s perpetual virginity. The people of Nazareth complain that Jesus is known to them – as the son of the carpenter Joseph, as Mary’s son and the brother of Simon, James, Joseph, and Judas, as well as several sisters. Protestants say this listing of brothers and sisters disproves Mary’s perpetual virginity, while Catholics argue that “brothers and sisters” also meant kinsmen or relatives, not just siblings. The distinction is very important for Catholics, for whom Mary’s perpetual virginity is dogma. But because of that important distinction, the significance of the Nazoreans’ knowing, of what familiarity really means–and ultimately, the nature of faith–is overlooked.

They say they know him. But how? They tell us how: by his connections—his parents, his siblings/relatives. That’s how people know people. One’s connections define who one is because it reveals origin—Jesus bar Joseph. It’s how a person is named and defined in a small community. So it’s not surprising that the people of Nazareth are offended when Jesus’ conduct contradicts that definition. They are understandably demanding, Who does he think he is? The truth is that they don’t know him at all. They only know his earthly context—his family, from which the word familiar is derived.

But that family context does not really identify anyone sufficiently to say that we know the person. It’s enough for superficial purposes, yes, but nothing more. To say that we know someone (not just who they are via family or some other group context) is to say that we have intimate acquaintance with him or her, not necessarily physical intimacy, which may be transient, but real intimacy, which only happens after a long period of time spent together, as in marriage or a close friendship. Any other long period spent in the company of another—like colleagues or even siblings—mostly leads to the kind of knowledge that can accurately predict reactions and behaviors. No—it takes time to know someone; it takes intimate closeness. Both these conditions must be met before trust can develop. And trust is the necessary foundation of love.

Of course, everyone agrees that the word “love” is tossed around in mindless abandon, for all sorts of reasons, good, bad, or otherwise. But I think we should be far more careful than we are in our liturgical and theological use of the term. It has such warm and soft connotations, such high-sounding virtue about it. In the Catholic church (and perhaps in other churches as well), we’ve pretty much settled on a definition of love as “self-giving”. I’m sure that’s adequate. It certainly sounds noble, but it really sounds more like an instructional definition; i.e., a how-to, as it were. That’s fine as far as it goes. But a nurse can be self-giving to a patient whom she does not know, for one example, and I don’t think she loves the patient. It takes knowing to love.

So, personally, I think it’s back to the drawing board. For the moment, I think love is not just a verb, as our theology has it. It seems, at least from my experience, to be more like a condition, an immersive condition of being—which is not to be confused with “feeling” (which is always transient). But I don’t know. Time is necessary in its composition, I do know that, so I spend as much time as I can in the presence of it. What happens is not that I come to know him, but that he knows me. I’ve said repeatedly to a friend (one with whom I can have this kind of conversation): “Remember! He sees you naked!” Indeed he does. He knows my sloth and sensuality, my lies and posturing, my vanity and self-love. He sees me without the garments I wear to hide from myself. He knows me.

There is so much more in this Gospel passage than a quarrel about Mary’s virginity. In fact, that quarrel distracts us from what the passage tells us if we read what it says instead of arguing about something else entirely. The Gospel writer goes on to say that Jesus could not do many works there because of their unbelief.  They have no faith in him because they don’t know him. In other towns and villages, he works great miracles and says repeatedly, Your faith, your belief, has saved you. Noting this contrast in outcomes based on faith leads a reader to believe what Jesus tells us over and over: it is our faith, our belief—that saves us. Faith—that’s a word as overused and misused as “love”, but it is infinitely easier to define: it simply means trust. There is no ambiguity here. As difficult as it is for us to do, it’s not difficult at all to understand.

And so the Lord asks his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” And then, “Who do you say that I am?” We know that it’s Simon who speaks up: “I say you are the Christ, the son of the living God,” thereby becoming the Rock of faith, becoming Peter, becoming the first professed Christian. It is Peter who is familiar with the Lord. The others likely thought Jesus was the messiah, and perhaps they had differing ideas of what the messiah would be, but Peter does not need to speculate, guess, or imagine. He has faith because he knows.

If we know who Christ is, Pascal’s wager becomes irrelevant. No gamble is needed in knowledge. Of course, we can’t know him completely; we can only say that we know who he is and trust in the hope that St. Paul later describes to the Corinthians: “At present I know partially; then, I shall know fully, as I am fully known.” But if we only know him for who he is, it is enough for now, for this life. Our limited knowledge allows us to begin to grasp the enormity of the sacrifice of his coming, and so to know, even just a little, the infinitude of divine love. That’s what saves us.