Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia
Today's Gospel reading is one of those passages from Sacred Scripture
that needs some clarification, needs to be understood in context.
Our Lord is telling us that we should become like little children.
When St. Paul tells us that we need to grow up and start acting like adults,
that we should put aside the ways of a child,
we shouldn't be, I guess one of the easiest ways to explain this
is to say that we should be childlike rather than childish.
We do need to grow up, we do need to take responsibility for our actions,
but in the spiritual life, to grow up means to recognize
that we are, in fact, children of God,
that He is our Father and that as adults,
as people who are responsible for our spiritual life,
we can never set aside the ways of humility.
We can never set aside that fundamental dependence that we have on God
and our need for His grace.
And we are responsible for the choices we make, yes,
and responsible choices mean that we need to come to the source of grace,
come to...
know God more through the teaching of Sacred Scripture
and the teaching of the Church.
And when we don't understand or when we're tempted to turn aside
or when we don't want to do what God wants us to do,
to recognize His presence in our life and seek His grace
and to trust Him in those moments rather than to complain
or whine like little children to embrace our Father.
The way a good child should and know that He is with us always.
Today, we celebrate the memorial, as I said,
of St. Ignatius of Linconi,
who was this Capuchin brother
who lived a very obscure and kind of simple life,
was a quester and had menial tasks in his friary
and lived for many, many years.
Until he was very old in the friary doing simple things for the love of God,
uniting himself to the Lord
and offering his sacrifices as a gift that was pleasing to God.
As a young man, he was inspired to enter religious life
and he resisted for some time.
It took a few interventions on the part of Almighty God
to get him to actually move on the inspiration that God had given him.
And that was part...
part of his transformation from a life of pride and self-reliance
to one of humility and dependence on the grace of God.
All of us need to go through that transformation.
We can trust that the Lord provides us with many circumstances to do that.
And as those who follow Christ in the way of spiritual childhood,
those of us who are willing to embrace the Blessed Mother as our mother
will recognize divine providence
in the circumstances of our life.
And find many opportunities for us to humble ourselves
and to realize our dependence on God's grace.
And that dependence is not contrary to confidence either.
The humility of a child,
the littleness of a child,
yes, leads that child to recognize its dependence upon its father,
but also to recognize that the father is always with them
and will indeed take care of them.
That is something that all of us need to do.
And sometimes we are proud,
not merely because we don't want to be dependent on God,
but also because we don't have confidence in God.
That's also pride.
When we want to have it our way.
And the way that God has shown us is that,
yes, we need to be humble and dependent upon his grace,
but we need to have confidence in that grace
and recognize that even if things aren't working out the way we would like them to,
even if the temptation, for example, is not going away,
that God knows what he's doing and that his grace is there
and that we can count on that grace
and we can have confidence that if we are suffering
or things aren't going our way,
that the Lord knows what he's doing and that he will take care of us.
So let us become like little children.
Let us become childlike, not childish.
Let us follow the way of our Lord.
Let us become spiritual children of our Blessed Mother.
And imitate the virtues of St. Ignatius of Lanconi.
Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!
Alleluia!