Like Children

Saturday of the Nineteenth Week in Ordinary Time C-2

Entrance Antiphon Cf. Ps 74 (73):20, 19, 22, 23 Look to your covenant, O Lord, and forget not the life of your poor ones for ever. Arise, O God, and defend your cause, and forget not the cries of those who seek you.

Collect Almighty ever‑living God, whom, taught by the Holy Spirit, we dare to call our Father, bring, we pray, to perfection in our hearts the spirit of adoption as your sons and daughters, that we may merit to enter into the inheritance which you have promised. 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: Ezechiel 18:1-10.13.30-32; Psalm 50; Matthew 19:13-15

Children were brought to Jesus that he might lay his hands on them and pray. The disciples rebuked them, but Jesus said, “Let the children come to me, and do not prevent them; for the Kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” After he placed his hands on them, he went away. (Matthew 19:13-15)

Like Children As we think of the story of mankind as it is presented in the Scriptures, there is one quality of character that God required, and which all too often was refused. God asked for docility and teachableness. Man had to learn what was right and wrong and act accordingly, and look to God as his Teacher and Lord. At the beginning when Man came forth from the creative action of God, he had to learn what to do, and it was God who told him what to do. You may eat of the fruit of any tree of the Garden — use your gifts and intelligence to develop yourself and the Garden in which I, your Lord and God have placed you — but of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you must not eat. That is to say, whatever you construct in the Garden of life and the world, you are not to act according to your own system of what is right and wrong. In all that you do, you are to respect the objective moral law that comes from my hand. So then, God taught man what he should do and what he should not do, but he refused. He was not docile. He was not teachable, and this was catastrophic in its consequences. There are thus two types of persons as presented in the Scriptures. There are those who aspire to be true children of God, being guided by his word and his will, and there are those who wish willfully to pursue their own path. The former is teachable, docile, open to and eager to know the intimations of the divine will. He is able to be shaped in accordance with the will of God. There are many instances of this in the Scriptures. The Fathers of the Church understood Adam and Eve to have repented and to have subjected themselves to the divine will after being cast out of their privileged position. Abel was a docile and teachable child of God, while Cain was not. Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, David and the prophets — in a word, the saints of the chosen people were teachable. They were able to be taught by God and were taught by him. They were true children of God, and we have an outstanding instance of them in the ones who made up the scene of Christ’s presentation in the Temple: Mary, Joseph, Simeon, Anna, and Jesus.

To be a child of God is to be docile, teachable, looking to obey his will, able to be shaped by his grace and formed in his likeness. The child typically emulates and learns from the parent. The child even looks like the parent. The seed of one plant gives rise to another of its likeness. The young animal or bird imitates its parent and thus learns to hunt and make its way in its brief span of existence. Where would it be had it not been taught by its parent, and had it not been instinctively disposed to follow its lead docilely? This pattern is everywhere. I tend to think that in general the successful man was once a successful child. The successful child is one who is teachable and docile — hopefully, before prudent and knowing parents. It is with good reason, then, that Christ describes those to whom the kingdom of heaven belongs as being “children.” Typically, children have numerous defects and their childhood stage is but the beginning of their life’s work of remedying those defects and limitations. But what the typical child does normally have is teachableness. He is docile. When he is not teachable and docile, he is “a bad boy.” The best example of “the child,” is of the child who is open to parental influence, dependent on the guidance and directions of his father and mother. So it is that our Lord receives the children with love. He insists on their being allowed to approach him. Our Lord loves them because they have the openness to the kingdom of God, which is nothing other than the lordship of God, especially as present in the person of Jesus Christ. Further, our Lord says that it is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs (Matthew 19:13-15). On another occasion our Lord said that unless we become like little children we shall never get into the kingdom of God. This means becoming truly docile in the presence of the will of God, and what is this but to become like Jesus Christ himself? Christ is the Son of the living God. He is the Father’s equal in being, most certainly, but is his very Son, his Child from all eternity. Jesus Christ is the archetype of what spiritual childhood, the human ideal, really is.

Let us often observe this good feature in the best children, their teachableness and their docility. If a child has this, he is well on the way to being a good man or woman. What can frustrate this eventuality is if, the child being teachable, the parent is a poor parent. But God is a superbly excellent parent, the perfect parent, and he will take us to the heights if we are but teachable and docile before him. Let us, then, with the aid of God’s grace every day, seek to be like little children in our Lord’s sense of the term, for to these belong the kingdom of heaven.

(E.J.Tyler)

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A Second Reflection: (Ezechiel 18:1-10.13.30-32)

Personal Freedom The influence of philosophical thought on the thinking of society is not often noticed. One philosophical position that has had influence is that which claims that we are not free. Our so-called decisions are the product, so this view goes, of a variety of forces within and without. In the last analysis man is not responsible for his actions. While such a view has simplicity and avoids the complication involved in the mystery of freedom and morality, it flies in the face of sheer experience. We are aware that we are free. Besides, God has revealed very clearly and had it taught and written down (Ezechiel 18:1-10.13.30-32) that each man is indeed responsible for his actions and will be held to account for them.

Our Lord said that the one who sins is to that extent a slave. So the greatest form of slavery, the greatest loss of freedom, is due to the enslavement that comes from deliberate sin. We must therefore take responsibility for our lives and live for the pursuit of holiness, determined to avoid sin. The key is to strive to avoid deliberate venial sin, and to repent of venial sin when it is committed. For this, we must exercise our freedom. Let us love our freedom, and protect it by resisting deliberate sin.

(E.J.Tyler)