Daily Mass Gospel Reflection - Christ-like, Child-like

Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus presents a child as the model for his disciples.
Jesus has just laid out for his disciples what is going to happen to him in Jerusalem,
how he will be rejected, tortured, and killed.
Oblivious to this, the disciples are discussing who among them is the most important.
For Jesus, the path to greatness lies on the road to Calvary, to self-forgetting love;
for the disciples—and for most people of most ages—it lies along the road to ego inflation.

What is the antidote?
A child is proposed as a kind of living icon to these ambitious disciples.
We notice first how Jesus physically identifies with the child by placing him by his side.
. It is as though he is saying that he himself is like a child. How so?
Children don’t know how to dissemble, how to be one way and act another.
They are what they are; they act in accordance with their deepest nature.

Why was this story of Jesus’ identification with children preserved by all of the synoptic Gospels?
Somehow it gets close to the heart of Jesus’ life and message.

+++An argument arose among the disciples
about which of them was the greatest.
Jesus realized the intention of their hearts and took a child
and placed it by his side and said to them,
“Whoever receives this child in my name receives me,
and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me.
For the one who is least among all of you
is the one who is the greatest. ”Then John said in reply,
“Master, we saw someone casting out demons in your name
and we tried to prevent him
because he does not follow in our company.”
Jesus said to him,
“Do not prevent him,
for whoever is not against you is for you.”+++

I would also say that a defining characteristic of a small child is that they trust their parents.

And the Gospel requires us to trust in the Lord and all His promises.

Where the temptation offered to our parents in Genesis was to not trust the Lord, to think He was holding out on them, and then how Christ Himself was in part tempted to meet His own needs (and this departing from what was to be done), in this latter state of trusting Him and His promises because of what Christ has done, faith is given as a gift we are told, is seeing the fall being undone ... now among mortal saints positionally but then when saints are perfected in the resurrection fully in every way possible.

In the past I’ve imagined a conversation between a child of God and the Lord about the hard things in Scripture, like how substitutionary atonement really really works, and to the questions asked the Lord responds: “Yes, that is difficult; but, I tell you that my Son dealt with that on the cross, and when He arose, and He is coming back again to receive you to Himself. That it works just as advertised. Do you trust me?”

Always He can ask us if we trust Him. His children will trust Him for that is what true children do. The others ... not so much.

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