although you have hidden these things
from the wise and the learned
As Paul said, "in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe" (see First Corinthians 1:21). This mystery could not be solved by scientific experiments of philosophical ruminations. The risk was too real that such scientists and philosophers would feel prideful if they were able to discover God by those means, and therefore superior to those who could not. If God was knowable by those means it would have meant that access to him was not at all egalitarian but given more to those with more natural ability.
you have revealed them to the childlike.
The Father desired to reveal himself to those who would receive rather than achieve that revelation. He was in any case something too profound and transcendent to be captured by any human art of skill, any philosophy or science. He was not merely one thing among others which could be analyzed and studied. He was the source of it all. We simply could not have known the Father if the Son had not revealed him,. Even now, we must remain childlike in the presence of so great a mystery. If we do approach it with foolish prideful we will find that we our projecting ourselves upon it rather than being drawn more deeply into it.
No one knows the Son except the Father,
and no one knows the Father except the Son
and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal him.
The Father draws people to Jesus and helps them understand his true supernatural identity of the Son of God, just as he would do for Peter. As with Peter flesh and blood can't help. Crowds, philosophers, religious figures, all of these are likely to have an opinion about Jesus. All of these will be wrong insofar as that opinion is their own guess or hypothesis. As we let ourselves be drawn to Jesus by the Father we experience at the same time the revelation of the Father by Jesus. The experience of this revelation is not merely data about him. It is an increasingly experience of his desire to be our Father as well. This is why Jesus taught us to pray to him as our Father. This is why "God sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying out, “Abba, Father!”" (see Galatians 4:6).
When we become childlike and allow ourselves to be caught up in the revelation of the Father and the Son we experience the power of his Spirit working in our minds and hearts. We discover the deep truth of the doctrine of the Trinity as the three in one who draw us ever deeper into the union they share. A doctrine that had seemed heretofore implausible on the surface, that had seemed at best overly technical, and not at all practical, now becomes a living reality, potentially even the very core and basis of our lives as sons and daughters in the Son.
Let the children come to me. Don’t stop them! For the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to those who are like these children (see Matthew 19:14).
Jesus loves the capacity of children to trust, to have faith. Having experienced, we hope, little of betrayal or disappointment, they are able to believe their own parents capable of nearly anything. Jesus is desirous of disciples with hearts like this, able to trust he and his Father with an absolute trust. But we who have been betrayed and disappointed, can we do so? Not on our own. On our own we attempt only the paths we ourselves can control to mitigate the possibility of future betrayals. Yet there is so much more than we can know in this limited way, and we can experience such a profound difference in our lives if we surrender to it. Let us ask Jesus and his Father to embrace us and hold us as they make themselves known to us. Their presence, their manifestation, can reassure us and allow us to lay down our defenses so that we might receive them.
If we insist in doing it ourselves, in boasting of our own power, we will end up like Assyria in the reading from Isaiah. For a moment it may seem that we are powerful. But such self-motivated power will inevitably be short lived. For their own sake and that of others God would not permit their arrogance to persist beyond what was useful in his providential plan. Let us learn from Isaiah to fear every instance of boasting in our own strength. Let us, perhaps, be an axe or a saw in the hand of the Lord. But if so, let us give him, not ourselves, the glory.
Not to us, O LORD, not to us, but to your name give glory, for the sake of your steadfast love and your faithfulness! (see Psalm 115:1)
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