When Jesus returned to Nazareth early in His ministry, He went to the synagogue on the Sabbath and taught there (Mark vi, 1-6). We are not told what He said to the people, but we are told their reaction. They were astonished.

What astounded them was His wisdom.

“Where did the man get all this?” they asked. “What is this wisdom that has been granted Him?” And it was not only the message that amazed them. There were also His actions, the miracles He performed.

What did He do? We are not told that either, and indeed it may be that those actions, however astonishing, would not fulfil the criteria for the miraculous that we would demand today. Perhaps what had seemed inexplicable then would not seem inexplicable now. That does not matter. But there were extraordinary events that accompanied His presence among them.

Astonishment, however, was not the whole story. The people also rejected Him. And that in turn may astonish us. They may in some way have been impressed by His wisdom and the wonders He worked, but they seem to have turned against Him.

Why would they do that? The only clue seems to be that they felt they knew Him well already. He was just the carpenter after all. They refer to Him as Mary’s son, and name His brothers, James and Joset and Jude and Simon, and mention as well His sisters who lived there. Familiarity seems to have bred contempt on a large scale.

What might we learn from this reaction, this combination of astonishment and rejection? For us too the clue may lie in that reference to Jesus’s family.

Traditional Christian faith has proclaimed that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was a virgin. She is believed to have been a virgin not only at the time Jesus was conceived, but throughout her life. Who then are these brothers and sisters?

One solution, of course, has been to suggest that, although Mary was a virgin when Jesus was conceived, she did not in fact remain a virgin afterwards. Jesus was her first-born, but after His birth, she went on to have other children.

That solution is simple, but it leaves untouched the testimony to her perpetual virginity from the earliest generations of the Christian community. That cannot simply be ignored.

Another solution suggests that they were extended family, cousins and half-brothers and sisters. But in Western society today, that solution seems feeble. It looks like a way of maintaining Mary’s virginity that colludes with that suspicion of sexuality as demeaning that has too often handicapped and blemished Christian teaching.

But the answer may not be as feeble as this reaction supposes. After all the scene is not set in Western society in the 21st century, but in the Ancient Near East 2,000 years ago. And that sense of extended family has not disappeared altogether even today.

Some years ago a Ghanaian student asked for prayers for his brother who had died. We talked for a while and then I asked him how many brothers and sisters he had. He paused for a moment and answered: “About 60.”

Some time later I mentioned this exchange to some other students. “That’s nothing,” a Kenyan replied proudly. “I have a hundred.” The extended family is alive and well.

The point here, however, is not to determine the question of Mary’s perpetual virginity, far less to prove it. Some will believe in it, while others dismiss it out of hand as absurd. Whatever the truth of that matter may be, that startling issue itself can alert us to the fact that there was more to the Jesus who seemed so familiar to the people of Nazareth than met the eye.

Even though they acknowledged His wisdom and were in awe of the wonders He worked, they failed to recognise anything more.

Their preconceptions were too deeply ingrained. They thought they knew Him because they knew His trade and because they knew His family, but the man they thought they knew, they scarcely knew at all. Familiarity had not only bred contempt; it had made them blind.

We can learn from their mistake. Who am I taking for granted and misjudging? Which of my preconceptions have hardened into prejudice? Where is the goodness I am too lazy to notice?

Monsignor Roderick Strange is the Rector of the Pontifical Beda College, Rome