Who Are the Brothers of Christ?

Our Lord’s brothers are his male relatives, his cousins, but also, as he himself tells us, anyone who does the will of his Father in heaven. His brothers cannot be blood brothers by his mother Mary, who had no children but Christ. In some traditions, they could be sons of St. Joseph by a previous marriage, according to the tradition that Joseph was a widower when he was espoused to Our Lady, but this notion is not generally accepted in the Western Church or by the papal Magisterium.