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A recording of today's gospel and reflection can be accessed here.

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Today’s gospel (Matthew 18: 1-5, 10, 12-14) sees the disciples preoccupied with that question of success which we discussed last week. Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? Jesus’s response must have surprised them, for His measure of success was by no means an earthly one, but entirely divine: whoever humbles himself like this little child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.  The rest of the gospel is then an extended set of metaphors on the preciousness of even the least of the disciples: it is not the will of my Father in heaven that one of these little ones should perish.

This should be a gospel dear to all members of COLW for our Book of Life identifies us as anawim, the lowly ones of the Lord, the servants, the humble ones, who claim no special status, even though they know that they are precious in the eyes of the Father. Like all great truths, this insight into the ways of God contains extremes that reconcile in paradoxical unity, for it draws the disciples’ elevated expectations of what greatness is into the light that shines from the simplicity and innocence of the child whom Jesus brought into their circle. It also draws together those seemingly contradictory truths that honour, the reward of great achievement, is bestowed upon children of the kingdom as the beloved of our Father above. Even the least of us is ennobled, regardless of our talents, our successes, or our attractiveness.

In this moment, we learn of greatness in the eyes of God, and yet we also feel keenly that it is not the same as greatness in the eyes of men, nor does Jesus’ praise of the child align with our own ambient values. In our times, we are used to the celebration of youth, and parents habitually profess their undying love for their children. I am reminded of a verse from Chesterton’s Songs of Education:

I remember my mother, the day that we met,
A thing I shall never entirely forget;
And I toy with the fancy that, young as I am,
I should know her again if we met in a tram.
But mother is happy in turning a crank
That increases the balance at somebody’s bank;
And I feel satisfaction that mother is free
From the sinister task of attending to me.

For reasons that Chesterton himself could see even a hundred years ago, never has childhood itself been so oppressed spiritually as it is in our contemporary societies where immersion in digital and screen culture ruins mental health and innocence on a daily basis, and bends souls so out of shape that it often leaves them stuck along a spectrum of immaturity. How must their angels grieve who see in one and the same moment the eternal face of God to whose vision their wards are called and the awful chaos that has been wrought in the souls of the young by devilry or carelessness? There is good reason to assert a preferential option for the young, and yet that option must be clearsighted about current realities.

Yet we would be missing something important if we assumed Jesus in this gospel meant to refer to human childhood alone as an exhaustive model of divine greatness. Whoever humbles himself like this child…Who is the child in the scene but Jesus Himself, the child of the Father, the only one in the scene who does not need to turn and become like a child? For it is possible even for a child to leave childhood early, driven out of their home by precocious vice or corrupting influences. Then, not only the adults but the children too will need to hear Jesus’ call: Unless you turn… you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself…is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

Unless we turn, i.e. unless we become like Jesus of whom we must learn for he is meek and humble of heart. Benedictines traditionally took a vow of conversion of life, an odd choice if we examine their path only from the outside. Does a religious need conversion? Are they not beyond such a basic task? But we hear the reality here in the gospel. It was a reality known to the disciples who had spent all this time in the presence of the Lord. To them, Jesus says: unless you turn… We turn first of all perhaps in our most shallow sentiments. We catch that breeze of enthusiasm and find in the turn an easy task for the heart. But then, we begin to find the turn difficult, as it requires now not only an emotional investment but an investment in the reform of our habits. We feel the G-forces of sin and selfishness, tugging at our efforts to follow the Lord, and if we persevere, God’s grace can maintain us on our trajectory. But the turn is still not yet done, for we are not yet converted all the way to the bottom of our hearts. On this merry-go-round of conversion, turning again is the only way forward; there is deep inner work to do, and while all our outward appearances may seem Christian, He has not yet fully conquered us until we allow Him to dwell in our very depths, to remake us utterly in His image so that we may now be as the little child in the midst of the disciples.

It is not the will of the Father that we little ones should perish, but unless we turn, we cannot enter His kingdom. The challenge of greatness is not the challenge of human achievement, nor the conquest of glory on the way to success and accumulation. The challenge of greatness comes in our readiness to take on this lesson of humility that is found in the Eternal Child, the Son of the Eternal One, and so to be worthy - or a little less unworthy - of the precious gaze that the Father casts upon us.