This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.
Imagery of the encounters of Jesus with children enchant us. We see Him laying His hands on them and blessing them in Jn. 19:13-15, and when the disciples try to shoo them away, He rebukes them because “the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.”
In that passage from the Gospel of John, Jesus’ regard for children goes beyond mere affection. He holds them up as an example to follow for us who likewise wish to inherit the Kingdom of Heaven. In today’s gospel from St. Luke, He places one beside Him and, again showing the child as the example, He tells His disciples that the least among us is the greatest.
It may be hard, though, to understand precisely in what way Jesus wants us to be like little children. Is He asking us not to take on any leadership, but to follow, like a child does its parents? Is He asking us to be naive like an inexperienced child, relinquishing any pursuit of wisdom and knowledge? Or is He asking us to be affectionate toward God, like a child is toward its parents?
The first reading does not show us a child, but rather, an adult who models for us what it is to be childlike in the way that Jesus means, unlocking for us the heart of Jesus’ message. For Job is at once the manliest of men and the image of what Jesus means when He calls us to be “the least among you,” like a child.
We hear Job undergo a litany of disasters, one after the other, wherein all things he possesses on earth are wiped out, one after another. And the loss is not limited to possessions. All his children, too, are wiped out at once. Yet, Job blesses the name of the Lord. “Naked I came forth from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I go back again. The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away.”
What is it that moves Job to this attitude? Surely, he loves the domain he has accumulated. But to Job, it is just a manifestation of that which he loves most, which fascinates him: God’s loving role as provider. God is not a good provider because Job has much; rather, Job sees the much that he has merely as a sign of God’s bounty, sovereignty and goodness. For Job, God is the Provider and the reason, in fact, why the much that he has possessed is good.
How is Job like a child? Simple. When disaster strikes, a child does not rebel against its parent or question its goodness. It runs to the parent who loves it as its key to understanding and fixing the situation. The parent is the essential; all else is contingent.
So the virtue of a child that Jesus calls us to imitate, to the point that he signals it as our key to greatness, is the virtue of trust, trust that is so strong that it eclipses any possibility of attachment to anything earthly.
How does trust make us great? It is not that greatness is a false ideal, and that littleness must take its place. We are not called to be meek milquetoasts who are afraid of success. Job was certainly no such man.
Rather, trust opens our hearts to the true greatness of holiness, which is infused by God, and comes from no earthly achievement. When our hearts are completely open to Him in childlike trust, and we have relinquished the need for control that keeps Him out of the driver’s seat, He can show us what greatness is by filling us with the divinity. And divinity is not a pious, sweet feeling; divinity is He who is omnipotent, creator of the universe. Divinity is greatness itself.
Thus, when we become as childlike as Job, we open ourselves to receiving and becoming the kind of thunderous greatness that can change the world. So it has occurred with the saints–first and foremost the Blessed Virgin Mary, whose childlike “yes” at the Annunciation and throughout her life–that is, whose childlike trust in God–became the catalyst for God to exalt her as Queen of the Universe.
Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Tell Jesus that you want no attachments but Him. That you will gladly live life with riches, or destitution, with human love, or loneliness, whatever He wants–that you just want the fullness of Him, and the fulfillment that He brings, which requires nothing earthly. Abandon to Him even your fears and your responsibilities. Tell Him that you trust Him–and ask Him to help your lack of trust.
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