25th Sunday of the Year

I write these weekly blogs in my very old age! And I think some of you, my friends, are headed in that direction. Here’s an anecdote I discovered in an old notebook. Should it speak for you and for me? In his autobiography, Morris West suggests that at a certain age our hearts simplify and we need have only three phrases left in our vocabulary: Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! He is right. Gratitude is the ultimate grace and value. I think it is deeper than love. But it takes a while to get there!
In this Sunday’s Gospel we find Jesus taking his friends for “a little talk with Jesus.” It was time for some home truths, some spadework to be done. They had been wondering about promotion and which of them would be the greatest in the coming kingdom. Jesus brought a little child before them and said that to welcome “one of these little children is to welcome me.”
In that culture children were nobodies. “In times of fire, famine or flood adults were saved first and children were rescued last. Within the family and community, the child had next to no status. A minor child was considered equal to a slave. Only after reaching maturity did a child become a free person with rights and obligations” – The Cultural World of Jesus, ii, 139, Pilch.
“Who is the most important in the Church? The Pope, the bishops, the monsignors, the Cardinals, the pastors of the most beautiful parishes….? No! The greatest in the Church are those who make themselves servants of all, those who serve everyone, subordinates, not those who have titles” – Pope Francis. (In an ideal world, would Christianity be a community of nobodies?)
Professor Tomas Halik wonders if Church leaders today have learned this teaching of Jesus: “Pope Francis’ call for a wise yet compassionate pastoral approach to people in ‘irregular situations,’ respectful of individual differences and fostering the responsibility of personal conscience, was met with the reluctance of much of the clergy to relinquish their role of judges, mechanically implementing the letter of canon law . . . Are superiors, especially bishops, ready to give up the monarchical conception of their role and become mediators of dialogue within the Church?”

Fr. QQ – 19/09/2024

Your love for God is only as great as your love for the person you love the least – Dorothy Day