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Good Job, Children

Child

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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Sweet Surrender

Sweet Honey

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.


“How sweet to my palate are your promises, sweeter than honey to my mouth!” (Ps. 119:103)

Strange sometimes are the images we read in the prophets, and today’s is no exception: We have Ezekiel eating a scroll. And it is a scroll we might expect to be bitter, since its message is “lamentation and woe,” but the prophet finds it to be sweet as honey in his mouth.

And indeed, even though God’s message can be hard and challenging, there is something infinitely sweet about being handed the recipe for happiness.

Our culture is one of self-sufficiency and control: We seek to manage our destiny through the choices we make. And all the while, we are inevitably conscious that the greater part of our destiny lies outside our control. This tendency to want to wrangle every aspect of our lives, combined with the awareness that we cannot, is a recipe not for happiness, but for great anxiety. It is no wonder that there are so many mental health problems plaguing our society.

And by contrast, in today’s first reading we see God simply handing Ezekiel the answer key to life, as it were, in the form of His decrees. So too does Our Lord and His Church provide us the key to happiness in the form of a readily available relationship with Him, obtainable through the simplest of means: Prayer, the sacraments, and our simple, daily acts of love within our vocation.

So what is our problem? Why do we continually revert to the recipe for angst, instead of the straightforward recipe for happiness? Is it raw pride, the need to be masters?

Viewed more deeply, it is fear and lack of trust. As we see the world going to hell in a hand basket everywhere we look, we have trouble taking the Lord’s hand and trusting Him. Like Peter suddenly aware of the waves on the raging sea, we grab control and then flounder and flail.

Against this backdrop, it is clear why Jesus in today’s Gospel refers the apostles to little children when they ask who is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven. To conquer their fear, children do not grab control. They turn immediately to the person they trust. We intractable adults can learn to do the same in the school of prayer, where we slowly learn to let Jesus convince us that, despite the swirling seas and shipwrecked boats around us, He’s got this.

And sweet indeed is this conviction, when it reaches our hearts–“How sweet to my palate are your promises, sweeter than honey to my mouth!”

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Talk with Jesus about your deepest concerns and fears, the things you strive mightily to avoid with all your daily effort–and abandon them completely into His hands, entrust them to Him. Ask Him if you should truly place all your trust in Him, or if He wants you to keep some of the control yourself.

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