HOMILY FOR THE FOURTEENTH SUNDAY OF THE YEAR IN THE ORDINARY TIME – YEAR A

Rev. Fr. (Dr.) Osmond Anike

Readings:

First Reading:Zechariah 9:9-10 – See now, your king comes humbly to you.

Responsorial Psalm:Psalm 144(145):1-2, 8-11, 13b-14 – I will bless your name for ever, O God my King.

Second Reading:Romans 8:9, 11-13 – If by the Spirit you put an end to the misdeeds of the body, you will live.

Gospel:Matthew 11:25-30 – You have hidden these things from the wise and revealed them to little children.

 

“I bless you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for hiding these things from the learned and the clever and revealing them to mere children”. This statement from Jesus in the gospel of today poses some interesting questions. As Jesus was talking about the Kingdom of God, does it therefore mean that the Kingdom is a mere childish thing? If it is hidden from the learned and the clever and revealed only to children, then why waste our time focusing of what does not really deserve our precious time? These and similar questions might come to mind when we read texts like this one. But, if these questions come up, it is a simple indication that we did not actually understand the text at all. Every human endeavor has a key to unlocking its potentials. When you have the correct key or the correct formula, you will have an unrestricted access to such endeavor. The difference between success and failure lies in the ability to find the correct formula for tackling a problem. There are certain human problems that require physical strength to tackle. For such problems, physical strength becomes the correct key. There are others, however, that require academic learning and specialization. In the later problem, physical strength is as useless as trying to hold back a hurricane with your bare hand. Each area has its own special key to success. And this is true also of the Kingdom of God.

The key to unlocking the secret of the Kingdom of God does not lie in learnedness or cleverness. Sure, our learning can take us to a certain extent; and our cleverness can help us waggle our way up to a point. However, beyond this point, our learnedness and cleverness become useless instruments to proceed any further. And the point where we could no longer proceed is the point at which the door to the Kingdom is still securely locked. In the end, we shall find out that every effort we have spent trying to use our learnedness and cleverness to unlock the Kingdom would have been a wasted effort. It is like trying to stop or divert a hurricane using one’s bare hand. The Kingdom of God has a key; and that key is called childlikeness, which is the exact opposite of childishness. Childishness is trying to use your hand to stop a hurricane because you feel you are strong physically; childlikeness is running down the basement to take shelter because that was what you were taught in your elementary school drill as a way to protect yourself from the hurricane. Anybody and everybody can rediscover his/her lost childlikeness. But childlikeness is natural to children. They are born with it; they don’t have to make any effort to exhibit it. The day childlikeness leaves a child, that day the child has become an adult; and a corrupt one for that matter. And so, we come back to the question of how Jesus was able to decipher in the childlikeness of children the secret of the Kingdom of God. What are those qualities in children that make them the symbol of the Kingdom of God?

To help us tackle this question, we shall once more turn to our friend, Anthony de Mello. He wrote that the first striking quality that one notices in the eyes of a child is its innocence. A child doesn’t have the ability to lie or to wear a mask. It doesn’t pretend to be anything other than what it is. You know, this is exactly what the mask is meant to depict – what the person inside the mask is not. Because of its inability to pretend to be one thing while it is another thing, a child is exactly like the rest of nature. Every other thing in nature is quite simply what it is except the adult human being: a tree is a tree, a rose is a rose, a dog is a dog, a star is a star, and a child is a child. But the adult human being is able to be one thing and pretend to be another. The Kingdom of God requires the innocence of a child who says exactly what he is told to say. If, for instance, you receive an unexpected visitor whom you don’t want to see, try telling your child to inform the visitor either that you are not at home or that you are sleeping. The child will simply deliver your message the way you told him to: my dad asked me to tell you that he is not at home/he is sleeping. And when the visitor tries to know the truth by asking the child, “But where is your father?” the child will reply: “He is in his room watching TV”. The innocence of the child would not allow him to lie by wearing a mask. Unfortunately, when we adults punish a child for telling the truth, we gradually contribute in destroying the child’s innocence. And there are several other ways that Tony de Mello listed in his, Call to Love: A Meditation, in which we contribute in destroying the innocence of a child:

(A) When we infect the child with the desire to become “somebody”. We try to compel our children to become not what nature intended them to be but rather what we feel will make them “famous” and “powerful”. When this desire is injected into the child’s consciousness, the child will begin to do any imaginable thing to fulfil that desire, and thereby destroying that innocence.

(B) Teaching the child to imitate someone in the way he dresses, acts and thinks. De Mello says: “The moment you make the child a carbon copy you stamp out the spark of originality with which it came into the world. The moment you chose to become like someone else, however great or holy, you have prostituted your being”.

(C) When you compel the child to compete and compare itself with others, you exchange the child’s simplicity for the ambition of wanting to be as good as someone else or even better. But a child is simply itself and doesn’t try to win applause and admiration through comparing and competing and strive for those empty things called success and fame.

It is only when we empty ourselves of all those struggles and worry that we shall really have rests and learn that his yoke is easy and his burden light. This is exactly the secret of the Kingdom of God that was revealed to mere children. Contemplation produces wonder no matter what it observes – a sunset or a stone or an insect. This is the prerogative of children. They are often in a state of wonder, so they easily slip into the Kingdom of God.