YOU'RE SPECIAL!

Many years ago some friends of mine, who already had a young son, decided that they would adopt a child, and repeated the process a couple of years later. They decided from the start that they would not attempt to conceal their adoption from their children, with the result that almost from the time they could talk the children would introduce themselves as “we’re ‘dopted, we’re special”! And, of course, they were – special, I mean. And now, thirty years later, they still are. Over the years, while the fact that they were adopted was not the most important feature in their lives, it naturally arose as a topic of discussion from time to time, usually in a fun way, imagining their possible origins and teasing each other with all kinds of weird and wonderful, and sometimes even horrible, possibilities.

I know now that it was more than a little immature at the time, but when I was in my early teens I remember on some very rare occasions, usually when there’d been some disagreement with my parents, wondering whether in fact they were really my parents or if I’d been adopted! Feeling sorry for myself I felt it would just serve them right if I left and went and found my real parents! At times like that it didn’t feel so special being adopted! Of course I really knew I wasn’t, ‘adopted’ I mean – of course I was special! - but it was a comforting form of escapist thinking until I came back to my senses!

When my own mother died in 1991, my father having pre-deceased her by nine years, I was, technically, an orphan! So, just to tease the girls, I told them that since they had such a lovely life in their family, I was going to ask their parents to adopt me as well, as I wanted to be special too. Of course, I should have known better because when it came to teasing I wasn’t even in their league! Suffice it to say that my threatened application for special status got short shrift. I would just have to remain an orphan!

In some ways it’s an awful word that, ‘orphan’. It defines a person in terms of what they haven’t, i.e. living parents. It’s never really nice to be defined in negative terms. And certainly it’s not the kind of thing that Christ would do to us! So it’s comforting in today’s Gospel to hear Him telling us that He would not leave us orphans. We can be tempted to think at times that His Ascension into heaven, which we’ll be celebrating during the week, was our loss. If only He were still here on earth with us how different things would be! But He’s trying to tell us that He is still here. If His Ascension was in any way a leaving, it was a leaving of the confines of His earthly body, so that He might dwell in his Mystical Body, the church.