When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, "Woman, here is your son." Then he said to the disciple, "Here is your mother." And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home. (John 19:26-27 NRSV)
In his commentary on John, D.A. Carson wrote the following about the meaning of Christ’s words to the beloved disciple:
The words Jesus uses, here is your son . . . Here is your mother, are reminiscent of legal adoption formulae, but such formulae would have been cast in the second person (e.g. ‘You are my son’). If Jesus was the breadwinner of the family before he embarked on his public ministry, and if every mention of Mary during Jesus’ years of ministry involves Jesus in a quiet self-distancing from the constraints of a merely human family, and this not least for his mother’s good . . . it is wonderful to remember that even as he hung dying on a Roman cross, suffering as the Lamb of God, he took thought of and made provision for his mother. Some have found it surprising that Jesus’ brothers did not take over this responsibility. But quite apart from the fact that they were at this point quite unsympathetic to their older brother (7:5), they may not even have been in Jerusalem: their home was in Capernaum . . . Barrett (p. 552) objects that their lack of faith (7:5) ‘could not annul their legal claim’. True enough, but this is not a legal scene. Jesus displays his care for his mother as both she and the beloved disciple are passing through their darkest hour, on their way to full Christian faith[1]. From that time (hora, ‘hour’) on, from the ‘hour’ of Jesus’ death/exaltation . . . this disciple took her into his home.[2]
Notes for the Above
[1] That both Mary and Jesus’ brothers are found with the apostles and the rest of the one hundred and twenty in the period between the ascension and Pentecost (Acts 1:14), even though the brothers, at least, were thoroughly sceptical a few months earlier (7:5) and even Mary may have had her doubts (cf. Mk 3:20-35), is best account for by the information Paul provides after his resurrection Jesus appeared to James (1 Cor 15:7).
[2] The last phrase, ‘into his home’, renders eis ta idia, lit. ‘into his own [things]’, an expression also found in 1:11. It is difficult to imagine that there is any direct allusion, however, not only because the contexts of each occurrence are so different but also because the sae phrase occurs in 16:32 without any possibility of an allusion to the Prologue. On the possibility that John the son of Zebedee had a place of his own in Jerusalem. (D.A. Carson, The Gospel According to John [The Pillar New Testament Commentary; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1991], 616-17)
