Tuesday of the 19th Week in
Ordinary Time
Memorial of Saint Clare
August 11, 2015 6:30am
In this morning’s gospel passage,
Jesus gives us two lessons, both focused on children.
First, Jesus calls us to become
like little children.
Here Jesus is not saying that we
should be childish or pretend that we are naive.
Instead, becoming like a little
child means:
being humble;
letting go of our pretense that
we know things that we don’t know or that we are completely self-sufficient;
realizing that we need and are
dependent on God.
This is something of what it
means, as Jesus says today, to “become
like children.”
And then, Jesus calls us to treat
children carefully, as special and significant.
I suggest that here, by children,
Jesus means those who young in years and also those who may be older but are
the little, the last, the least, and the lost in our society.
As disciples of Jesus, we are to respect
and care for all “children” –
whether it is those who are
children by age,
like a child in the womb growing
toward birth,
or young boys and girls who lack
good education or proper nutrition,
or those who are “children”
because they are the little, the last, the least, and the lost ones in our
society –
like some of our elderly,
like those without effective
access to medical care,
or like those who are the objects
of prejudice because in some way they are different.
So, with the image of a child or
of children, Jesus teaches us some important lessons this morning.
