Saints & Mothers

Jacopino Del Conte’s 16th century Madonna and Child with the Young Saint John depicts Mary breastfeeding Jesus beside John the Baptist.

Image source: Shala Graham, Visual Museum of Women in Christianity

Rufus’s Mother, Julia, Nereus’s Sister

Greetings & Maternal Love

The final three women referenced in Romans 16 are Rufus’s mother, Julia, and Nereus’s sister. Paul simply greets Julia and Nereus’s sister, designating them as “saints” (Romans 16:15). Christ-following women, alongside men, are saints. In Paul’s greeting to Rufus, we learn more about his mother than Julia and Nereus’s sister:

“Greet Rufus, chosen in the Lord, and greet his mother—a mother to me also” (Romans 16:13).

In the early, Christ-following churches, the saints redefined their kin relationships, considering one another their sisters and brothers in Christ. Here, Paul clearly expresses feeling mothered by Rufus’s mother in some significant, loving way worth calling out in his letter. As Cohick points out, “the ministry of mothering those who are not of a woman’s own blood is one that God has blessed throughout the ages.”[1] Indeed, just so.

References

[1] Lynn Cohick, “Romans,” in The IVP Women’s Bible Commentary, ed. Catherine Clark Kroeger and Mary J. Evans (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2002), 645.

Note: All Bible quotations come from the NRSVUE.