Wednesday of the Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time

Entrance Antiphon Cf. Ps 17 (16):15 As for me, in justice I shall behold your face; I shall be filled with the vision of your glory.

Collect O God, who show the light of your truth to those who go astray, so that they may return to the right path, give all who for the faith they profess are accounted Christians the grace to reject whatever is contrary to the name of Christ and to strive after all that does it honour. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Scripture today: Isaiah 10:5-7.13-16; Psalm 93; Matthew 11:25-27

At that time Jesus said, I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure. All things have been committed to me by my Father. No-one knows the Son except the Father, and no-one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. (Matthew 11:25-27)

The Knowledge of God John Henry Newman’s principal interest was the Christian encounter with unbelief and its claim that Christian dogma flies in the face of reason. Newman probed the true meaning of “reason” and endeavoured to show that reason under the guidance of conscience will lead to faith, while insisting that faith is a step that goes beyond mere reason. He also pointed out that a great deal depends on one’s fundamental assumptions. 120 years after the death of Newman, an important British Philosopher died, one who was notable for his works on the philosophy of religion. Antony Flew (1923 – 2010) was of the analytic and evidentialist schools of thought, and argued that one should presuppose atheism until empirical evidence of a God is produced. He also criticised the idea of life after death. So his assumption was that one should begin with atheism, and his further assumption was that empirical evidence is required for the verification of a truth. But the immediate question that occurs to the observer is, why ought this be assumed? Another example of a striking assumption was that of Rene Descartes. The first and one indisputably perceived fact, Descartes laid down, was that “I think.” Because I think, I know for certain that I exist. Now, if all I have to start with is my awareness that I think, how am I to get out of my thinking to the reality of that which I am thinking of? Descartes was religious, but his theory contained the seeds of religious agnosticism. Newman was right in speaking of the paramount importance of right starting points — and these must be our natural starting points. We naturally sense that there is an objective God, even if we find it difficult to cast this perception into a convincing syllogism. But let us continue with Flew. On the basis of his starting points, most of his working life was spent in writing on the non-existence of God. Over the years, though, the argument from the finality of things began to have sway. In January 2004 he informed his friend and philosophical opponent, Gary Habermas, that, to the disgust of other atheists, he had become a deist.

Now, Flew was a very intelligent man and lived a long life. But how far did he get? He finally got to being a deist. One cannot but be happy for his sake that he reached the point of accepting that there is a God according to the deist notion, but how is this to be compared with the ordinary Christian believer who lives her life deeply in love with the holy Trinity? A child is born to a farming family in a remote district, with little opportunities for education. She is baptized and receives the gift of the Holy Spirit. From an early age she displays a notable Catholic faith. She prays and lives a good life as she is growing up. She has only a primary school education. Though Mass is celebrated only once a month in her farming district because of its remoteness from the parish centre, in her teens every Sunday she gets on her horse and rides to where Mass is celebrated. She loves God and has a knowledge of him nourished by revealed truth as presented in the Catechism, in the Gospels, and in the preaching of the Church. Her family is religious and the knowledge of God passes on to her through family prayer, family example, and above all through the action of grace in her soul. It becomes the basis of her life. She is a contemporary of Antony Flew, just a little older perhaps, and she dies within a year or two after he, full of God and her religion. All her life she has been sensible, and fulfils her vocation as wife and mother. From early years God has been the principal reality of her life, and of course, she far outstrips Flew in her knowledge of God. Flew finally reached deism, and many cheered to see it. Habermas was especially gratified. But Flew was far behind so many of the little ones, the “little children,” as our Lord refers to them in today’s Gospel passage. They are ones who are the beneficiaries of the grace of God, the ones to whom the Father reveals the Good News of Jesus Christ and his Church. “At that time Jesus said, I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure” (Matthew 11:25-27).

Let us, together with our Lord himself, praise and thank our Father in heaven, for what he had deigned to reveal to us his little children. This was what it pleased him to do. He has given us the grace of Baptism and membership in his Church, and with that has endowed us with the knowledge of him and his divine Son and the Holy Spirit. We are children of God, temples of the Holy Trinity, blessed with his divine Revelation, and marked out for heaven — if we are faithful to what we have been taught and know. Eternal life is this, our Lord said at the Last Supper, to know you, Father and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. Let us treasure this saving knowledge of him, then, and bring it to others. It gets us to heaven.

(E.J.Tyler)

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Second reflection: Matthew 11:25-27

The True Possession: One of the instinctive tendencies of every man is to possess, to have, and to have as much as possible. Animals have this tendency too, in their own way. But man can aspire to possess an enormous amount. St Ignatius Loyola asked Xavier, what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and to ruin his very self? Thinking of this kind of question many adherents of various non-Christian religions have divested themselves of many possessions. God means us to possess great riches: he means us to possess Christ. Our Lord says in Matthew 11:25-27 that everything had been entrusted to him by his Father. He was and is "rich", and he means us to be "rich", but in him. In possessing Christ we possess everything of value. For this reason St Paul says in one of his letters that in Christ we possess every heavenly blessing.

Let us aim to possess everything by possessing Christ, for to gain the whole world and to lose Christ is to gain nothing, and to have nothing.

(E.J.Tyler)

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