In the broader context of our Gospel passage for today, the disciples have just finished listening to Jesus field some difficult questions from the Pharisees. They had asked Jesus to explain more fully His teaching because they didn’t understand. Many of Jesus’ teachings were difficult and the disciples did not always come to a fuller comprehension until later, sometimes not even until after Jesus’ Passion and Resurrection.
In the midst of the intellectual and theological confusion, children begin coming to Jesus. Kids don’t always have the best timing. I know, call me crazy, but as a mom of six there are some days that my kids, as much as I love them, seemingly refuse to observe when they are interrupting, interjecting, or compounding issues with persistent off-topic questions.
Now, if the disciples couldn’t understand what on earth Jesus was talking about, I don’t find it too far of a stretch to believe they didn’t think children would understand either. Why bother having them around then, if they weren’t going to understand, weren’t going to ask the right questions, and wouldn’t comprehend the answers anyway?
Jesus is of a different mind. Jesus sees the children coming to Him in their innocence and He reaches out to them. He points to them as a model for how the disciples ought to approach the world and His kingdom. It’s not that the children were capable of understanding some kind of hidden knowledge inaccessible to the adult disciples. The children are coming to Jesus, not because they seek answers to complicated theological questions, but because they want to be close to Him. By bringing children into their midst, Jesus is inviting the disciples, and by extension all of us, to recall the real purpose of their time with Jesus.
Jesus calls each of us to become childlike. This is quite different from childish. We can turn to St. Thérèse of Lisieux for a great many spiritual truths, including this simple and profound revelation about childlike souls: “It is to recognize our nothingness, to expect everything from God as a little child expects everything from its father … to be disquieted about nothing, and not to be set on gaining our living,” that is, “the eternal life of heaven.” (Her Last Conversations).
When we recognize that we are utterly and completely dependent upon God, we enter into this place of childlike faith. When we turn to God, again and again, as a little child does to his mother for every need or desire, great and small alike, we become childlike before God. When we run to God in every moment of sorrow or delight, as a daughter flies into the arms of her father with equal vigor over a bouquet of dandelions or a scraped knee, we embrace our identity as children of God.
Daily Reading
Saturday of the Twenty-first Week in Ordinary Time
Reading 1 1 Cor 1:26-31 Consider your own calling, brothers and sisters.Not many of you were wise by human standards,not many were powerful,not many were of noble birth.Rather, God chose…
Saint of the Day
Saint Raymond Nonnatus
Saint Raymond Nonnatus, delivered by cesarean after his mother’s death, is the patron saint of expectant mothers and midwives.
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