We seem to assume that Jesus was the only child of Mary and Joseph, but didn’t he have brothers and sisters? Sometimes people are confused by the Gospels referring to the brothers or sisters of our Lord as, for example, when James and Joseph, Jude and Simon are spoken of as the “brothers of Jesus” (Mk 6:3). We need to understand that the word translated as “brothers” is often used to mean cousins or other close relatives. James and Joseph are later identified as the sons of Mary of Clophas (Mk 15:40), Jude as the son of James (Lk 6:16), James the Less as the son of Alphaeus (Lk 6:15) and James the Great as the son of Zebedee (Mt 20:20). The Church has always therefore understood that the “brothers and sisters” of Jesus were close relatives, not children of the same parents. This way of using the term “brother” is familiar from the Old Testament. Although we know that Lot was Abraham’s nephew (Gen 11:27), he is spoken of as his brother (Gen 14:14), and we know that the 120 brothers of Jesus to whom St Peter spoke were not actually physically children of Our Lady (Acts 1:15). In the Liturgy of the Church we speak of Mary “ever virgin”; her perpetual virginity is affirmed by the great Fathers of the Church and solemnly defined in Council as a Catholic doctrine which we are bound to believe. She is also Mother to all of us who are the brothers and sisters of Jesus by our baptism.