Like children: from Origen to the brotherhood of Christ

Imagine a family where growing up never means leaving home, but rather drawing closer to it. A child is born, trembling, dependent—and his father feeds him, carries him, forgives his clumsiness. Then the years pass. The child grows, learns, serves the household. One day, something extraordinary happens: the father calls this now-grown child by a new name—brother. Not that he ceases to be a son, but his lineage transforms into brotherhood, without ever fading away. It is this story, lived not between men but between Christ and us, that Origen uncovers in the Gospels: a Savior who begins by calling us "my child," and who ends by calling us "my brothers.".

Origen and the mystery of a lineage that becomes brotherhood

How Origen's Commentary on Saint John illuminates the transition from the state of childhood to that of brother of Christ

We all know that feeling of being small before God. It comes to us early, often in childhood, and it never quite leaves us—this sense of being dependent, fragile, waiting for a forgiveness or a healing we cannot provide for ourselves. Origen, one of the greatest exegetes of early Christianity, a priest born in Alexandria at the end of the second century, spent his life scrutinizing the Gospels with almost microscopic attention. Nothing in his work is a detail: every word Christ speaks carries a hidden meaning, a direction, a movement. And it is precisely this perspective that allows him to discern, in two seemingly innocuous healing scenes, the trace of an entire divine pedagogy.

The Commentary on Saint John is not simply a collection of notes. It is a monumental work, one of the very first commentaries on a book of Scripture in Christian history, written over several years in a context of theological controversies where it was necessary to defend the coherence of biblical revelation against interpretations that fragmented it. Origen proceeds verse by verse, with the patience of someone who knows that truth is never fully revealed at first glance. The passage we are considering comes from Book Thirty-Two, one of the last in the work, where Origen reflects on Jesus' farewell to his disciples and on this profound statement: "Go to my brothers and tell them, 'I am ascending to my Father and your Father'" (John 20:17).

This is where Origen poses his question, simple yet profound: how is it that the one who called his disciples «little children» (Jn 13:33) now calls them «brothers»? Among humans, he observes, such a thing is impossible—a child remains a child, a father remains a father, the hierarchy is never reversed. But with Christ, something else is at play. He writes it plainly: «Unlike what happens among humans, where a child cannot later become the brother of the one whose child he was previously, it is not impossible to pass from the state of being a child of Jesus to that of being a brother of Jesus» (Commentary on John 32, 368-374). What this means for us is simple to state, but difficult to fully grasp: our relationship with God is not fixed. It is alive, it moves, it matures — and this movement does not depend on our merits, but on the resurrection of Christ itself.

Consider a child who, having grown into adulthood, continues to receive financial support, shelter, and protection from their parents—until the day when, without ever denying their debt, they begin to work alongside them, as an equal, almost as a partner. They do not cease to be their child. But the nature of the bond changes. Origen sees this same transformation in the Gospels, but taken to its extreme: «Those whom he called my ‘Little Children’ become, at least after the resurrection of the Savior, his brothers, for they have been reshaped, in a way, by the resurrection of Jesus» (Commentary on Saint John 32, 368-374). The word «reshaped» is not a mere translation: it signifies that it is not we who grow by our own strength, but that it is the resurrection itself that reshapes us, that makes us capable of a fraternity we could not have imagined before.

The paralytic, the woman with the hemorrhage, and the tenderness of a father who always begins there

Before proceeding further in this spiritual journey, we must pause at the starting point that Origen deliberately chose: the two miracles in Matthew 9. «For he said to the paralytic, ‘Take heart, my child; your sins are forgiven,’ and to the woman with the hemorrhage, ‘Daughter, your faith has healed you’» (Mt 9:2, 22). Two broken bodies, two lives hanging on the hope of a gesture, and two words that recur: child, daughter. Origen observes that the Savior never begins by making demands. He begins by establishing a relationship. Even before healing, he places the suffering one in a position—that of a child who is recognized, loved, and awaited.

This way of beginning speaks to us more than we realize. How many of us, in times of hardship, wait first to be acknowledged before even being helped? A sick person in the hospital doesn't just need treatment—they need to be spoken to with respect, to be seen as a person and not a file. This is precisely what Jesus does: before the miracle, the words of belonging. "My child." "My daughter." And these words alone already open a breach in the solitude of suffering.

Origen states, with a clarity that still disconcerts some readers today: «Do not be afraid to say that, for some, the Savior is a father» (Commentary on John 32, 368-374). This statement requires courage to pronounce, for it places Christ in a role usually reserved for the Heavenly Father alone. But Origen does not shrink from this theological boldness: if Christ speaks and acts as a father to those who suffer, then he must be called such, without false modesty. What this changes for us is the permission to allow ourselves to be loved paternally by Christ himself, and not merely to consider him as a master, a model, or a judge.

An inner ladder: from servant to son, via disciple

«"The servant first becomes a disciple" — the first step on a spiritual staircase

Origen does not simply contrast two states, childhood and brotherhood. He outlines a four-step progression, almost an inner ladder that each of us is invited to climb without even realizing it. He writes: «You will examine whether the servant first becomes a disciple, then a little child, then a brother of Christ and a son of God» (Commentary on John 32, 368-374). What this sentence indicates, very concretely, is that our relationship with God almost never begins with filial tenderness. It often begins with obedience, with service, with a form of reverent fear—and it is only little by little that it warms, draws closer, and becomes internalized.

Let us consider someone who is beginning their journey in the faith, or who is returning to it after years of estrangement. In the beginning, everything resembles a set of rules to be followed: commandments, masses, rules that we respect because we have been told to respect them. This is the state of the servant—useful, but still external to the relationship. Then comes a moment when we begin to understand why we do what we do; we become disciples, we learn, we question, we seek to grasp the meaning behind the action. And then, one day, without knowing exactly when it happened, we discover that we are no longer following rules: we love a Father. We have become children. Origen tells us that this last stage is not even the last: beyond spiritual childhood, there is fraternity with Christ himself, and through him, full and complete sonship with God.

This interpretation finds a powerful echo in Saint Paul, whose letter to the Romans sheds new light on this same dynamic: «For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption, by whom we cry, ‘Abba, Father!»» (Romans 8:15). What Paul calls adoption, Origen calls reshaping through the resurrection—two ways of expressing the same truth: we do not remain prisoners of a relationship of servile fear. We are called to something else, to an intimacy that transforms even the way we address God.

«Go find my brothers» — brotherhood as a fruit of the resurrection, not as a deserved reward

It is important to emphasize a point that a quick reading of the text might overlook: the brotherhood that Jesus proclaims after his resurrection is not a promotion granted to the disciples because they earned it through their faithfulness. Let us remember: these are the same disciples who, just a few days earlier, abandoned him, one of them even denying his faith before he came to know him. And it is precisely to these men—fallible, fearful, and scattered—that the Risen Lord sends this message: «Go to my brothers and tell them, »I am ascending to my Father and your Father’” (John 20:17).

This message resonates with us in our own failures. We all know the experience of having let someone down—of having lacked courage, of having fled a situation out of fear, of having broken a promise. And we also know the anguish that follows: «Have I lost my place with this person?» Christ answers, through this passage, that not only is our place not lost, but that it is deepened. Origen puts it this way: «Those whom he called my ‘Little Children’ become, at least after the resurrection of the Savior, his brothers, for they have been reshaped, in a way, by the resurrection of Jesus» (Commentary on John 32, 368-374). It is therefore not our own merit that makes us brothers of Christ: it is his resurrection that reshapes us, that repairs in us what our own denials had damaged.

A Desert Father, Abba Poemen, recorded in the Sayings of the Desert Fathers, would tell those who came to him, discouraged by their own falls: «Never lose faith, even if you fall every day» (Sayings of the Desert Fathers, Poemen). This saying, from a completely different context—that of the monks of the Egyptian desert, a few generations after Origen—unintentionally confirms the same intuition: the relationship with God is not broken with each fall. It is patiently rebuilt, like a fabric being mended thread by thread.

«"Trust, my child" — the words that always precede the miracle

Let us return, to conclude this second part, to the scene of the paralytic, for it contains a practical lesson that we have too quickly overlooked. Jesus says, «Take heart, my child; your sins are forgiven» (Mt 9:2). Note the order of things: the word of tenderness and forgiveness precede the physical healing. The body remains paralyzed for a moment longer—but the soul is already restored.

This speaks to our own impatience. We often want God to begin by resolving our visible problems—illness, financial hardship, family conflict—before even allowing us to enter into a relationship of trust with him. Origen, by emphasizing this word of belonging that precedes the miracle, invites us to reverse this order in our own prayer: to first accept being called "child," to allow ourselves to be loved first, even before our external circumstances change. This is a way of praying that requires humility, for it presupposes that we renounce measuring God's love by the yardstick of our immediate resolutions.

What this scale changes in the way we look at our own spiritual life

What this meditation offers us, above all, is a way to reread our own years of Christian life without judging them as a failure simply because they still seem too close to service or strict obedience. Origen reminds us that this stage is not a deficiency—it is a necessary step before the next. No one leaps directly from nothingness to fraternity with Christ. There is a path, patient, sometimes slow, sometimes interrupted by our own setbacks, but always oriented toward this destination: to become not merely a servant, but a son.

This also invites us to look at our own human relationships in a new light. When a child grows up and the relationship with their parents changes, it never signifies a break, but a deepening. The same is true of our relationship with God: it is never about "leaving" spiritual childhood for a colder, more distant relationship, but rather about allowing this childhood to mature into a warm fraternity, embodied by Christ himself, who was not ashamed to call us his brothers after first calling us his children.

Origen's thought on this point has had a unique history within the Christian tradition. Long debated, sometimes even viewed with suspicion because of other, more controversial aspects of his work, this precise insight—the progression from servant to son by way of disciple—has nonetheless endured through the centuries and reappears, in various forms, in the writings of much later spiritual authors, all of whom speak, in their own way, of an inner growth toward ever-greater intimacy with God. What this Alexandrian Church Father perceived as early as the third century continues to illuminate our own path, twenty centuries later, with an enduring freshness.

In concluding this meditation, we are left with only one certainty, expressed by Origen with almost disarming simplicity: we never cease to be his children when we become his brothers. «It is not impossible to pass from the state of being a child of Jesus to that of being a brother of Jesus» (Commentary on Saint John 32, 368-374).

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