Tim Drake on Our Family and What It Means

“Over the past couple of weeks I’ve dug out my family tree to try to tie up some loose ends. It’s been both an enjoyable and an enriching experience. With the advent of technology, there are a lot more tools available than when I first started keeping records in 1984. Websites and available public family trees, immigration records, census data, and even military records make genealogy work much easier.

“In a matter of days, utilizing online records, I was able to go further back in my family tree, and obtain information that would have required much more effort only a few years back.

“Doing such work has made me realize some truths.

“We all come from a family. Whether we know that family or not, each of us is the result of a biological mother and a biological father. The two, as science clearly demonstrates, are cooperators with God, in bringing new life to fruition. Whether or not we belong to a family, we most assuredly came through the result of one man and one woman. Even if we’re adopted, or the result of infidelity, or an unplanned pregnancy, we cannot escape our biological origins. Even our Lord’s genealogical family tree wasn’t spotless.

“When you start looking at a family tree going back two, three, or four generations, and consider all of the male-female combinations that were necessary in order for you to exist, it’s rather incomprehensible. Remove even one person from the equation and you wouldn’t be here. Had your great-great-great grandfather on your mother’s side not courted that farm girl, married her, and had children... then ‘poof,’ you’re gone from the equation. It’s a humbling realization, and it gives new meaning to what the Lord said to Jeremiah: ‘Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you’ (Jer 1:5).”

In a recent commentary, writer Tim Drake reflected on family trees and on our relationship as adopted children of God in His Church.

To access Mr. Drake’s complete post, please visit:

Catholic Pulse: The Family We All Belong To, And the Consequences (28 JAN 14)