The disciples approached Jesus and said,
"Who is the greatest in the Kingdom of heaven?"
The disciples often seemed to become especially concerned with greatness and status shortly after hearing Jesus speak of his coming passion. It was as though mention of his death sent them into high alert, a mode of self-protection. It is was mode that caused a failure to love because it made them to be concerned only with what they could get for themselves and not with what Jesus, their friend, their teacher, and the master was going to face. They wanted to distract themselves from such dark predictions, and those thoughts of greatness were sufficiently captivating to distract them.
He called a child over, placed it in their midst, and said,
"Amen, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children,
you will not enter the Kingdom of heaven.
Greatness in the Kingdom is not at all like the world's ideas about greatness. Children don't have a resume, or much in the way of useful or productive abilities. One generally wouldn't put them first in line for any task that needed to be done if it were particularly important. The world is all too ready to dismiss such individuals because it accounts for everything only as it can provide some utility that can be harnessed and controlled. Yet somehow children, useless in the eyes of the world, are the greatest in the Kingdom of heaven.
We realize that children are by no means perfected human creatures and we cannot account for their archetypal Kingdom greatness by seeing them only through rose colored glasses. They aren't necessarily free from pride or selfishness. Yet children, provided they have good families, typically demonstrate the ability to rest confidently, trusting in their parents to protect them. They are meant to be able to enjoy their position in the family without feeling that they must somehow earn their parents' love by performing well. Their good performance issues rather from their confidence that they are loved rather than as a means to try to earn that love.
Whoever humbles himself like this child
is the greatest in the Kingdom of heaven.
The life of the Kingdom is the life of the family of God and as such is vastly different from the worlds of business and politics. In such realms conquerors, geniuses, and the politically astute dominate. But in the Kingdom it is those who become small enough to rely on God in all things who become great. Sometimes this may look impressive in the eyes of the world as with how Saint Francis was able to trust God so radically. Often it is more hidden, as with the Little Way of Saint Therese of Lisieux.
And whoever receives one child such as this in my name receives me.
Receiving those from whom we don't stand to gain anything is a wonderful way to practice loving as we are meant to love. This is, after all, how we ourselves are first loved by Jesus. Children can help us escape from the world's ideas about greatness if we allow ourselves to experience their self-evident value, their preciousness in the eyes of God. This in turn can help to heal our own woundedness that often forgets that we too possess this same preciousness in his eyes.
"See that you do not despise one of these little ones,
for I say to you that their angels in heaven
always look upon the face of my heavenly Father."
God demonstrates his love for each and every little one by providing them with a guardian angel to watch over her. This means that there is no one whom we are not obligated to treat with the full dignity of a child of God. This goes also for even those people in the news whom we dislike, with whom we find ourselves utterly unable to sympathize. It goes even for ourselves, even at our worst. These angels never desert those in their charge or give up on them. Neither then must we.
We can avail ourselves of the help of these angel guardians, our own, and those of others. We can even pray for the leaders and the great ones of the world that their own guardian angels would help lead them away from concern with pride and to direct their steps along the path of love.
No comments:
Post a Comment