Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia
What you have hidden from the learned and the clever
you have revealed to the merest children.
This one verse really summarizes
the whole attitude that we should have
toward Jesus and our faith.
The learned and the clever
are poised to take what they want
and leave what they don't want behind.
They're poised to create the truth
in their own image and likeness.
And indeed, isn't this what happens so often today?
People...
want to do what they want
and they look for some guru
to confirm that what they want is good.
Every single vice imaginable
can be justified by somebody.
Either the association,
National Association of Psychiatrists,
whatever group,
or the Surgeon General,
or whoever,
Supreme Court will tell us what we want to hear.
No matter what we want to hear,
no matter what it is,
no matter how bad it is,
whether it's pornography or abortion
or same-sex marriage,
we can always find someone who is learned and clever
to tell us what we want to hear.
It's like Adam and Eve standing at the foot of the tree
of the knowledge of good and evil.
God didn't want them to take everything that they wanted.
He wanted to feed them from the tree of life.
But they decided they prefer not to be,
feed from the tree of life,
but they would rather take the fruit
that God told them not to take.
They'd have it their own way
and they'd do it their own way.
So our Lord praises then the children
who are willing to have the truth revealed to them,
willing to be fed.
And that's really one of the most fundamental attitudes
that a follower of Christ should have.
We should want to be fed.
This is one of the reasons why for so many years
John Paul II refused to allow communion in the hand.
Don't go back and say that I condemned communion in the hand,
that it's a sin.
I'm not saying that at all.
But the historical fact is that the Holy Father
did not permit it for many, many, many years,
even after it was being requested over and over again
because it wasn't the custom of the church
and it wasn't in the best interests of reverence
for the Blessed Sacrament.
It was only after,
after years and years and years of disobedience
on the part of many dioceses across,
not just the United States,
but across the world,
that he finally gave in and said,
well, you're doing it anyway
and I'm not going to be able to stop you.
And finally the permission was granted.
But aside from the fact that
the risk in terms of reverence for the Eucharist
is so much greater,
than the risk in terms of communion in the hand,
the sign of it being received has to be maintained.
The Eucharist, that's why it's wrong to take the Eucharist
or to pass the suborium around
and people take from the suborium
because the sign of the sacrament,
I mean, aside from reverence and the particles and all that,
the sign of the sacrament is that it is something received.
Every sacrament is received.
The faith is received.
The truth of Christ is received.
We don't take it.
We don't mold it and shape it in our own image and likeness.
It doesn't belong to us in the way that we have mastery over it.
We are indeed children
who are in need of being fed.
And we're in need of being fed in the mind through the faith
and through the sacraments in our will and our whole being.
We need to be fed by God.
And so this is why our Lord praises the children.
And it's the pattern that our Lord himself has followed
because once he praises the children
for the Father having revealed to them the mysteries of the kingdom,
he says,
everything has been given over to me by my Father.
No one knows the Son but the Father
and no one knows the Father but the Son
and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal him.
So he praises the children
and then he reminds them,
he reminds us of how he came into the world
and how through him the Father is revealed to us.
And how did Jesus come into the world?
He came into the world by becoming the Son of Mary.
He received from Our Lady
a nature which he otherwise didn't have.
Even though he was God,
the second person of the Blessed Trinity,
dwelling in inaccessible light for all eternity,
he deigned by his own will,
the will of his Father to become one of us
and to receive, truly receive,
a human nature from Our Lady.
He humbled himself to become dependent on her.
And so dependent and so real
was this relationship of mother and son
that our Lord actually practiced
and continues to practice the fourth commandment
in regard to Our Lady.
And without that relationship,
none of us are saved.
So our Lord himself gives us the pattern
and only those who are childlike
will perceive it
and will be willing to follow it.
It doesn't mean that we become childish
or anti-intellectual.
It means that we humble ourselves
and recognize that without Christ,
without his example,
without our willingness to follow the faith unreservedly
and recognize that everything that we have
is something that we have to receive,
first of all,
then we can make no spiritual progress.
So our Lord has been very, very good to us
not only by teaching us the truth
but by showing us the way.
May we always have the humility to turn to him
and in a special way to turn to his Blessed Mother
so that we always remain humble
and willing to accept at God's terms,
at God's hands,
what he has for us,
the bread of life and the word of life
that will lead us to salvation.
Alleluia!