First Homily - Sept 22, 2024 - Jesus embraces the child

Good morning, brothers and sisters.

The readings we have just heard all highlight a similar theme: the contrast between pride and humility, between powermongers and children.  I’d like to focus on the mandate to be like children. It’s a topic near and dear to my heart, as I trained in internal medicine+pediatrics, and I have young children.

The Gospel seems to make two points: first, our responsibility to be child-like before God our Father. Secondly, our responsibility to be responsible caretakers to children.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus makes a profound gesture, in response to the disciples’ fixation on being the greatest. He calls over a child, embraces the child, and says, ‘whoever receives a child like this, receives me, and the One who sent me.”

Remember the context here. In Jesus’ time, children were nobodys- they were the lowest rung of society; they had no rights; they were generally seen as a nuisance. But Jesus embraces this child and says that this child represents Jesus—the Son of God Himself is childlike. This gesture must have shocked his audience.

If we go a little further in Mark’s Gospel, we’ll see a similar scene when Jesus embraces several children. He says, “Let the children come to me; do not prevent them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. …whoever does not accept the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it."  Jesus again holds up children as an ideal for his followers.

We must be childlike.. otherwise, we cannot enter Heaven.

How do children imitate Christ? Young children have many positive attributes: they are innocent, they are genuine, they maintain a sense of wonder.  The 2nd reading describes them well: “pure… without inconstancy or insincerity.” But most importantly, children trust wholeheartedly in the love of their parents. What does this love look like?

The image that comes to mind is one from my own family life. My favorite part of the day is at night after my kids have gone to sleep - when I see them sleeping, all naughty behavior is forgotten. When I see their sleeping innocence, my heart swells, and I know I’d willingly take a bullet for them.

This, my friends, is a small taste of the love that the Father has for each one of us. He loves us unconditionally, not dwelling on our weaknesses or sins – but gladly sacrificing even Himself for his children.

To be like children, we must accept this love.  In todays’ Gospel, Jesus called over the child, who came willingly. The child knew that a hug was coming.  St Therese of Lisieux is a great model here: this great Doctor of the Church described her “little way” of [quote] “spiritual childhood, the way of trust and absolute self-surrender… [which] is the confidence of the little child who sleeps without fear in its father’s arms.”

Do we have the blind trust of a young child, in the love of our heavenly Father?  Or are we afraid that we are too flawed and unlovable?  Will the Father reject any child who turns to him in trust? Think of the Prodigal Son, whose Father ran to him with childlike abandon to embrace him when he came home.

Being child-like does not mean being perfect, it means having perfect trust. It means depending 100% on our loving Father.

This is what the angels do. Remember how angels are often portrayed in Catholic art… we can see examples here, in the statue of Mary to my right, and in the nave, the two paintings of Mary on both sides… in all of these, we see Mary surrounded by cute little babies with wings.  These represent the cherubim, the 2nd highest order of angels—immensely powerful spirits.  The word cherubim comes from the Aramaic word ke-rab-ya- which means child-like. Unlike Lucifer, who said ‘I will not serve’, the angels maintained a child-like trust in God’s plan.

Sometimes God’s plan doesn’t make sense to us children. My toddler wails loudly when I yank his hand away from the hot stove, or tell him he cannot eat a fourth chocolate-chip cookie. But eventually, he will accept my offer of a hug, and calm down… trusting that daddy knows best, that what I’m doing is for his good. Even though his brain doesn’t understand his father’s will, he trusts. How much more can our 3lb brains not understand the plan of the Almighty God?

Oftentimes, it doesn’t make sense why our loving God permits terrible suffering – whether that’s the cross of infertility or miscarriage or illness or the loss of a job.

 In these moments, we must act like the child, who cries out to his dad for a hug.  Our model is Christ. During his agony in the garden, he cried out: ‘Abba!’ ‘Daddy!’ ‘Daddy, Take this cup from me, but not as I will, but as you will.’ That is the child-like love of Christ, or St Therese, for the Father.

Might I suggest to everyone, some homework – in a short while, when we all pray the Our Father, can we try to recall our childlike dependence on God, and the tender love he has for us? Father – thy will be done… I trust in you.

OK, so the first point is that we need to imitate Christ’s child-like trust in the Father.

The second point is that we need to imitate the Father Himself, showing paternal love for our children. Children need our extra attention.

The two parts are connected; and Christ here fulfills that Old Testament prophesy from Malachi: “He will turn the heart of fathers to their sons, and the heart of sons to their [Father].”

We need to treat children with special love. Jesus says, ‘Whoever receives a child like this receives me’. Jesus tells us to receive, to care for, children with love. In fact, in the chapters just before and after this one in Mark’s Gospel, we see many examples of Christ showing special care for children.

We see the story of Jesus healing the boy who suffered seizures, and his healing the ‘little daughter’ of the Siro-Phoenician woman, and his raising Jairus’s ‘little girl’ from the dead—Talitha kuom – and now- give her something to eat. Perhaps I’m reading the Gospel with Desitin-tinted glasses, but I’d argue that Jesus was the first pediatrician in history. In next Sunday’s Gospel we’ll hear Jesus’ lesson that ‘anyone ‘who causes one of these little ones to sin, it would be better if a great millstone were tied around his neck and he was thrown in the sea’.  It’s one of Jesus’ most striking, even violent, warnings: anyone who causes children to sin would be better off drowned to death. Yikes. Caring for God’s children is a grave responsibility.

We know that Children are a gift from God – indeed, they belong to him. We parents, aunts, uncles, and teachers – we are like babysitters or nannies for the true Father.  It’s our job to care for children as the Father would want… at the end of the day, we need to hand his children back to Him, well-fed and unharmed. We need to go by His rules; we shouldn’t feed his children with candy, but with the Bread from Heaven that he took great pains to leave for his kids. 

We need to make sure his children take their medicine regularly – the sweet medicine of Reconciliation, which heals us when we’re sick. A good babysitter even tastes the medicine herself, to prove to the child that it tastes ok-  and just so we should be the first in the Confession line, before our kids.

It's hard, fellow parents. This world doesn’t make it easy. We have so much on our plate: soccer practice, band rehearsal, birthday parties. But actually, parenting doesn’t need to be that complicated. The truest things in life are the simplest. As parents, we have one job: help our kids get to Heaven. Our job is to help our children become saints. Period.  Spouses can disagree on a lot – politics, food, or sports -- but this is the one truth that everyone can agree on.  Heaven or Hell is forever- there’s nothing more important. To me, as a physician-scientist, it makes lots of sense that I should focus on the outcome that affects a trillion trillion years – infinity – rather than the outcome that affects maybe 90 years tops.

Yes, of course it’s not all on us… even despite our best efforts, children can be wayward – remember St Monica and St Augustine. But we need to try our best, begging for God’s grace, as Monica did.

We should worry much less about how our kid does in football or math contests… and much more about their faith.  Jesus chides his apostles who fret about who is the greatest in the eyes of the world. What does it profit a young man or woman, if they get into Harvard, but lose their faith?

Bishop Barron often quotes the words of Leon Bloy: “The only real sadness, [failure, or] tragedy in life, is not to become a saint."  How many well-intentioned parents sacrifice tons of money and effort to get their kids into a prestigious school, but neglect to prepare them for the attacks on their faith that will happen there?  It’s no surprise that so, so many teenagers fall away from their faith, when they never learned how to respond to the major arguments against Catholic-Christianity. It breaks my heart when my kids fall and get a bad scrape – I cannot imagine the pain of them falling from the faith… and this is so common.

I mentioned St Therese of Lisieux – her mother St Zelie Martin – had several children, and after each was born she would say this prayer: Quote: ‘[God], If ever [my child’s soul] be lost, I prefer that You should take it without delay.”  She prefers that her child would die as an infant – without delay – rather than grow up to become a sinner and go to Hell, if God foresaw that. That prayer may seem extreme, but it’s flawless spiritual logic. It would be better to tie a millstone around my neck, than cause a little one to sin.

Ok, so I want to give some homework. This is homework for everybody. Obviously many here have no children – and I know for some couples this has been a heavy cross.

But everyone can touch a child in their life – whether as an aunt or uncle or friend or catechist. Think of St Carlo Acutis, who learned his faith from his nanny – not his fallen-away parents.

So the homework is for everyone: it’s like a medical school exam with 4 choices – you can pick which of the 4 you want, and try to do it for a child this week.

First: buy some Catholic artwork for a child… perhaps a little icon or statue of a child’s patron saint, to go in their room. Kids often have a picture of family or a celebrity in their room – well, use artwork to help teach that the saints are our spiritual family, and our real heroes.

Second: listen to a podcast with your children. My family loves Saints Alive – my kids will listen to these stories about the saints for hours. Saints Alive – if you remember one thing from my homily, remember that. It’s amazing.   For older children, consider Bishop Barron’s podcasts or youtube videos, to learn more about the faith. Don’t send them to battle, to high school or college, without their armor.  If you have an older child who has already left the faith, buy the book Return by Brandon Vogt – it’s a great resource.

Third: Practice charity together- buy some $10 Dunkin Donut gift cards to give to the homeless, or you can help with our parish St Vincent de Paul Society.

Fourth: bless your child with the sign of the cross every day. Remember at your child’s Baptism, when you were told to trace the sign of the cross on their forehead? Why not do this every night, before they go to sleep?  ‘May the Almighty God bless you and help you to become a saint.’ [exorcism joke, if we had been naughty that day… and fall down on the ground stricken]

Say it until you believe it: ‘my child, the most important thing in life is to become a saint.’ This is exactly what my parents taught me, and I’m so grateful they did. They’d say that it doesn’t matter if you have MD or PhD at the end of your name – only ‘St’ at the beginning of it. I know I’m far from that now, but we’re all trying… trying to take baby steps, holding the hand of our Father.

Amen.