I give praise to you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth,
Jesus came to those who were his own but his own received him not. Even the places where much of his ministry took place where more worthy of reproaches than praise. One might have thought Jesus would have regarded this apparent lack of success with disappointment. After all he did not come to condemn the world but rather to save it. And yet after he had all but condemned, if not the world, at least a part of it, he seemed to rejoice.
for although you have hidden these things
from the wise and the learned
you have revealed them to the childlike.
He did not rejoice in the fact the people were not accepting him or that the truth of his message was hidden from them. But what Jesus knew that did give him cause to rejoice was that things were proceeding according to the Father's plan. As he intended, people who considered themselves wise and learned found themselves frustrated because wisdom and learning alone could not reveal Jesus to them.
For since, 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).
Jesus came to save all of those who would welcome him. But to do so required a childlike heart that was open to revelation of the truth. He did not seek the childlike because they were unintelligent or naive, but because they had the capacity to trust and were teachable. They had not yet solidified into self-chosen hardened states as had the wise and learned who rejected him. Moreover, he came to the childlike because Jesus himself was the only Son of the Father, and what he wanted to share was precisely this relationship. It was a relationship that could not be had without receptivity, to which self-sufficiency was an insurmountable obstacle. In rejoicing that God insisted on bringing salvation to the childlike Jesus celebrated the fact that God was doing something more and better than merely removing punishment or giving some forensic but not actual approval to people who were as yet unchanged, and not truly regenerated. God was in fact about the business of sharing his own divine nature, desirous the Jesus would "be firstborn among many brothers" (see Romans 8:29).
All things have been handed over to me by my Father.
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.
Because Jesus had a relationship to the Father that was utterly unique he knew him in a way that no one else could claim. He alone was truly qualified to reveal him. This would probably have been an earthshattering proclamation that shocked his listeners. No one? Not even Moses or the prophets? But no, none of them, not with this intimate and exhaustive knowledge. It was this relationship that allowed Jesus to say to Philip, "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father" (see John 14:9).
Jesus seemed to suggest that there was a relationship between being begotten by God and knowing him. Other, lesser, merely human knowledge could be an obstacle. But Jesus was more than able to reveal the Father to those with open hearts. The more childlike such ones became the more Jesus could teach them. The more he taught the more they took on the identity of sons and daughters of the Father. It was a virtuous cycle, culminating in the sacraments of the Church. For example, baptism, by which we truly become adopted sons and daughters of God, is also called enlightenment because it also brings about the renewal of our minds in germinal form. This is something that works itself out as we grow in our identity throughout our lives. We can see this relationship between vision and identity in what John wrote.
Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is (see First John 3:2).
Therefore we ought to make ourselves pure as Jesus is pure, so that there is nothing to obscure that vision. We may do so with great hope. The Son wishes to reveal the Father to all by whom the Father himself desires to be known. And from this desire of his none are excluded.
This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth (see First Timothy 2:3-4).
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