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Knowing the Father and the Son

U. S. A. | SPIRITUAL LIFE | SPIRITUALITY

July 16, 2014. Wednesday of the Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time

Matthew 11: 25-27

At that time Jesus exclaimed: "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 the childlike. Yes, Father, such has been your gracious will. 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.

Introductory Prayer: Almighty and ever-living God, I seek new strength from the courage of Christ our shepherd. I believe in you, I hope in you, and I seek to love you with all my heart, all my soul, all my mind, and all my strength. I want to be led one day to join the saints in heaven, where your Son Jesus Christ lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever.

Petition: Jesus, help me to seek you with a sincere heart.

1. Hidden from the Wise: Wisdom, knowledge and understanding comprise three of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. So in itself, being wise and learned is not the problem. Jesus is here speaking of those whose pride and inflated ego make them wise and learned in their own estimation and for their own purposes. The mysteries of God are thus hidden from them precisely because they have focused their hearts and minds on themselves as the supreme good: "The greater a being is, the more it wants to determine its own life. It wants to be less and less dependent and, thus, more and more itself a kind of god, needing no one else at all. This is how the desire arises to become free of all need, what we call pride" (Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, God and the World, p. 125). In the end, it is they who have closed the door on God since God will never close the door on us.

2. Revealed to the Childlike: Later in this same Gospel, Jesus will reaffirm this basic truth in another way: "Unless you change and become like little children you will never enter the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 18:3). Even as adults we must never cease to be childlike, uncomplicated and duly dependent. Children are not naturally complicated and deceitful. Hiding behind masks and developing subterfuges is a tendency learned with time. Little by little we begin to calculate, use excuses, ration out our generosity, and stray from the simplicity and rectitude of the way God has marked out. We must strive to be sincere with our Lord and sincere with ourselves, seeking to please him above all things. Failure in our lives is due to insincerity, that absence of the total nobility and utmost loyalty needed to fulfill what Our Lord asks of us.

3. Christ, the Revelation of the Father: Knowledge of the Father is the ultimate good man can possess because it corresponds to the deepest longing in the human heart for happiness. St. Thomas Aquinas tells us that happiness lies in knowing that we possess the good we seek. We call the full knowledge of the good possessed "heaven," which is our ultimate goal in life. To whom would Jesus not wish to reveal the Father and open the way to heaven? Jesus´ actions – his preaching, his sacrifices and his death on the cross – demonstrate how much he wants to reveal the Father to everyone. However he also chooses to need you and me to help him achieve this goal. Do I really desire that everyone come to know the Father and to reach heaven? My actions will answer that question for me.

Conversation with Christ: Dear Lord, grant me the grace to possess the wisdom and knowledge that come from union with you while at the same time always maintaining a childlike disposition. Help me to depend on you as a loving child. Mother Most Pure, make my heart only for Jesus.

Resolution: Today I will reflectively read Philippians 2:5-11.

Homily of the Day

July 16, 2014

The Gospel reading today confirms that the ways of God are not our ways. His priorities are not the same as ours. We strive to rise in stature and this, our parents instilled in us when we were young, and we believe it. While there is nothing wrong with learning and desiring to increase our knowledge and skills, it would be incomplete to just strive for pure knowledge and lose the orientation of why we were created in the first place. WE are creatures of God, and sometimes knowledge, intelligence and human logic can be deadly in the sense that we may fall into the danger of thinking that we are god, or quite near to being god. When man reached the moon, it was an achievement of an impossible dream. With that, man thought he has the power to do anything and everything. With the advancements in science, man may fall into the trap of thinking he is supreme, with control over all the events in his life. That is why when cancer, or uncontrollable natural disasters occur, it is good because we are put into our rightful place – creatures of God. That is why the mysteries of the Gospel are more easily accepted by the “little” ones, meaning those who understand that we are always under the mercy and mantle of God, those who accept that we depend on Him for everything and we are nothing without Him. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of true wisdom.