God's Adopted Children

Homily for Friday of the Twenty-eighth Week in Ordinary Time

Yesterday, St. Paul wrote that we had been adopted by God through our relationship with Jesus. Today, St. Paul continues that line of thought by speaking of what it is we would inherit as a result of being adopted.

Orphaned children were frequently adopted by Roman families as well as Greek families. However, the concept was not something that most Jews would have even thought about. Because the Jewish families of the Middle East lived in extended families, children grew up in households with their mothers and fathers, aunts and uncles, grandparents, and any children born to their uncles. They were regarded as brothers and sisters even though in our culture they would have been considered cousins. Because of this family arrangement, orphaned children were very rare as they would simply have been regarded as members of the family even if their parents had died.

Because St. Paul was a Roman citizen and had been educated by Greek philosophers, he was familiar with the concept of adoption and used it to develop his theology of our relationship to God. Because we had died and risen with Jesus, the Father also considers us as his children. In Paul’s mind this was an expression of God’s love for us.

The Gospel passage for today expands this kind of thinking by telling us that God has even counted the hairs on our head and knows us well, in fact, better than anyone else.

The response we use today sums up the issue quite well: “Blessed the people the Lord has chosen to be his own.”