I give praise to you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth,
for although you have hidden these things
from the wise and the learned
you have revealed them to little ones.
Jesus delights when we come to him like trusting children. In his own time those who did so became his disciples. They were a marked contrast with the wise and the learned, with Pharisees, Sadducees, and scribes, those professionally religious and purported wise and learned members of society.
For it is written:
“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
and the learning of the learned I will set aside.
Where is the wise one? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made the wisdom of the world foolish?
For since in the wisdom of God the world did not come to know God through wisdom, it was the will of God through the foolishness of the proclamation to save those who have faith (see First Corinthians 1:19-21).
The wisdom of this world was limited in its usefulness. Those who thought themselves wise relished the idea that their understanding gave them control and superiority over those whose understanding was less. But the wisdom of God entailed the surrender of control in faith, the willingness to let go being the final arbiter of ones own reality. The deeper one was steeped in the wisdom of God the less they would feel superior to others and the more they would become servants instead.
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 wisdom of God is rooted in God's identity. The only way to get at that identity is to receive it as a revelation from Jesus. When we instead try to use the wisdom of this world to understand God what we see is only a false god made in our own image. Humans are wont to create gods of immense power, magnified versions of all that humans celebrate and fear on a grand scale. Our fallen tendencies cause our conceptions of the divine to be distorted and false.
Take my yoke upon you and learn from me,
for I am meek and humble of heart;
By contrast to the gods humans create is the heart of Jesus himself that we celebrate today. He is the word by whom the Father sustains in things, in whom we live, move and have our being. By definition the one who created and sustains all things has all power over that creation. Yet he is not a tyrant, and does not lord it over those he has made. He is not like a man that looks to what he has made to fulfill his own needs. But rather he looks to what he has made in order to see his creatures themselves fulfilled.
and you will find rest for yourselves.
For my yoke is easy, and my burden light.
Our God, Father, Son, and Spirit, revealed to us by Jesus is the God whose name is love. Everything he does is motivated by love, from choosing Israel, the smallest of all nations, to choosing us, not on any merit of our own. He reveals himself to us not to make us more wise and learned in the worldly sense, but rather so that we might fall more in love with him and thus become better able to love one another.
No one has ever seen God.
Yet, if we love one another, God remains in us,
and his love is brought to perfection in us.
As little children we allow ourselves to be embraced and chosen by God. We willingly share his easy and light yoke rather than seeking our own on our own. Because he first loved us we love in return, and "whoever remains in love remains in God and God in him".
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