Word to the Wise
Saturday, February 26, 2011 - Saturday in the 7th Week in Ordinary Time
[Sir 17:1-15 and Mark 10:13-16]People were bringing children to Jesus that he might touch them, but the disciples rebuked them. When Jesus saw this he became indignant and said to them, "Let the children come to me; do not prevent them, for the Kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Amen, I say to you, whoever does not accept the Kingdom of God like a child will not enter it."[Mark]
I cannot claim to be an expert on the world of the child! However, I have been for many years a student of children and parents who have some claim to know of this world. I am aware of what Jesus describes as the openness of a child to the Kingdom of Heaven. There is a trust and acceptance that is hard to describe, but it is there. Any school teacher can testify to it. However, the point of the incident in today's gospel is not so much about children as it is about humility. Children were not as exalted in Jesus' day as they are in our modern American society. Because of their status as being among the lowest in society, their acceptance becomes the model that Jesus offers. The child in Jesus' audience had nothing but trust to live on. The same would be true of the poorest of the poor.
We can be challenged in this way to ask if the gospel is an essential of life or simply an "extra?" When the gospel offers the only hope, can we accept it as openly as a child? Or have we become so surrounded by and dependent on the secular society and scientific outlook of our day that we lose any openess to the transcendent beauty of Jesus' kingdom, which is manifested in the beauty of a child? What does the child have that we jaded adults do not have? If the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to the child-like, we may have to give up a lot of cherished ways of thinking so that we can share in that belonging. AMEN
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