In my estimation, an only child has many handicaps. They are alone. There is no ready-made community of playmates, which would be provided by a family with a quiver full of offspring. They need to seek playmates in school or in their neighborhood. I suppose that the only child might tend toward being something of a loner and only if they would have an aggressively social personality would they have a large community of friends. As a child I thought that an only child was a spoiled and self-centered creature. I am sure I was wrong about that judgment. Despite the drawbacks to being an only child, there are also some significant benefits. You don't have to fight to gain solitude. Solitude is your natural state. One of the other benefits is that you don't have to share your family's estate with anyone else. There are no rivals for what is in the will. This is an especially significant benefit if you come from a wealthy family. If you had to share your inheritance you would have less. And as the phone commercial with the little kids says, "Who wants less? More is better."

Jesus is the Only-begotten Son of God. There is no other. There is no other possible. He who is eternally begotten has no brother or sister by eternal generation. But God's Son was really aggressively social. He could not but become incarnate of Mary that He might come among the people of His creation and make it His neighborhood in which He made many brothers (Rm 8:29). Solitude, though His right, was not His desire. He desired to have fellowship with us that He might deliver to us all the benefits of brotherhood with Him. He did not hole up in His heaven, like a divine Greta Garbo, "I just want to be alone." No, he risked Himself upon the hopeless gamble of humanity. He offered Himself into our hands to redeem us from our sin. He made brothers of those who were His inveterate enemies and saw to His death. In that death He both bequeaths His estate to His brothers and inherits them as His portion and possession.  He who should have shunned our company, because He knew what was in man (Jn 2:25), instead sought it that He might confer on us life and salvation.

He not only chooses fellowship with us over solitude, but He also shares His portion with us by seeing to our adoption into the family of His Father. As an only child, He could well have enjoyed His Father's estate without sharing it with feckless companions like us. Yet, by sharing this estate, He does not end up with a smaller inheritance. And remarkably, we are His portion. Like the poor that St. Lawrence paraded before the Roman magistrates, Jesus seeks to make us His brothers, sharing with us His own holiness and righteousness. How precious we are now. He turns us from rebels and burdens upon our Father's good will into beloved children and precious possessions (1Pt 2:9). We are His. He has ever more blessings when He has us, because we are redeemed in Him. The more of Himself He gives away, the more He has. The more we receive of Him, the more He has us. That is our inheritance.

"John says: 'All who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God' (Jn 1:12).  What did Christ afford to them? Great benevolence! Great mercy! He was born the only Son of God, and yet was unwilling to remain alone. Many men, when they have no son, in advanced age adopt a son, and thus obtain by an exercise of will what nature has denied to them. This men do. But if anyone has an only son, he rejoices all the more in him; because he alone will possess everything, and he will not have anyone to divide the inheritance, so that he should be the poorer. Not so God. That same only Son whom He had begotten, and by whom He created all things, He sent into this world that He might not be alone, but might have adopted brothers. For we were not born of God in the manner in which the Only-begotten was born of Him, but were adopted by His grace. For He, the Only-begotten, came to forgive the sins in which we were entangled, and whose burden hindered our adoption.