Today’s readings can be found here.
Today’s short Gospel passage features children:
“Children were brought to Jesus that he might lay his hands on them and pray. The disciples rebuked them.”
I am extremely convinced that after 2,000 years we continue to live in a time when children are outcasts, and the elderly along with them.
These two extreme categories of human existence struggle to be truly incorporated into the life of society. Yet Jesus makes it clear that children are the ones we must look to in order to understand how to welcome the kingdom of heaven:
“Let the children come to me, and do not prevent them; for the Kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.”
Perhaps Jesus says this because children live with far fewer preconceptions than adults, have more ability to trust, are simpler and less complex than others, and can go from crying to joy without too much paranoia.
So, becoming children does not mean becoming childish (how much childishness there is in relationships in our society!) but it means becoming open, simple, trusting, and spontaneous like they are.
How much energy we would save if we lived with the simplicity of children and abandoned the typical paranoia of adults!
~
Father Luigi Maria Epicoco is a priest of the Aquila Diocese and teaches Philosophy at the Pontifical Lateran University and at the ISSR ‘Fides et ratio,’ Aquila. He dedicates himself to preaching, especially for the formation of laity and religious, giving conferences, retreats and days of recollection. He has authored numerous books and articles. Since 2021, he has served as the Ecclesiastical Assistant in the Vatican Dicastery for Communication and columnist for the Vatican’s daily newspaper L’Osservatore Romano.
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