Homily: Saturday 19th Week of Ordianary Time

Readings: Jos 24:14-29; Ps 136 Mt 19:13-15

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A few years ago, after baptizing a little baby girl, a friend of the baby's parents approached me with these words:

"You know, you Catholics shouldn't baptize babies and little children. There's no way that baby can accept Jesus Christ as her Lord and Savior. No one should be baptized until they're old enough to understand what baptism is all about."

She then gave me one of those "so there!" looks and waited for my response.

I figured she was probably pretty familiar with Scripture so I asked her if she believed that baptism was necessary for salvation. "Of course," she replied, "Jesus said so."

I agreed and repeated Jesus' words in His conversation with Nicodemus:

"...no one can enter the Kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit" [Jn 3:5].

For good measure, I added Jesus' great commission to the disciples:

"Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age" [Mt 28:19-20].

I then asked her, "And what did Jesus say about children and the Kingdom of God?"

"What do you mean?"

And so I referred to today's Gospel passage from Matthew 19:

"Let the children come to me, and do not  prevent them; for the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to such as these" [Mt 19:14].

"I don't want to argue with you," I said, "but I just ask you to think about what Jesus said. If the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to these little ones, shouldn't we lead them to Jesus? And isn't baptism the very first step? If we don't, aren't we acting like the disciples who tried to prevent them?"

"But how can this little baby understand salvation?

"She can't. That's the job of the parents and the Church, to raise this child as a Christian and bring her to an understanding. After all, in the Gospel it was the parents who brought the little children to Jesus, and it was the disciples who tried to stop them."

Well, eventually, she agreed to think about it; thus ended our little dialog.

But this Gospel passage relates to far more than baptism. It also stresses the need for humility, something we adults resist.

Jesus scolds the adult disciples, doesn't He? Stop acting like officious bureaucrats. The children must be allowed to come to Him.

And it's not just children to whom the Kingdom of Heaven belongs, but to "such as these": to those who have the humility of a child; to those with simplicity and openness; to those who accept the need to change; to those who are open to conversion. Only these are able to respond to the fullness of the Gospel.

What better examples of this than Jesus Himself and Mary, His Mother. Just consider the Annunciation [Lk 1].

The Son of God, the Eternal Word, agrees to become a tiny unborn child, conceived in the womb of a teenaged girl named Mary. 

Jesus will be born into a human family and grow up in a community of faith. He will do the father's will: He will preach and teach and heal. And then He will suffer and die for the sins of all humanity. His is a vocation of total humility, a vocation that is beyond our comprehension. As St. Paul reminds us:

"He emptied Himself, taking the form of a slave...He humbled Himself becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross" [Phil 2:7-8].

Mary, too, displays remarkable strength in her human weakness. In faith she accepts what the Father has planned for her without being able to understand fully what it means. Mary, Blessed Mother of Our Lord, Mother of the Church, and our Mother, joins with Jesus showing us the need for humility all along our journey to salvation.

The Son of God - a Life of Humility

Brothers and sisters, without humility there is no virtue; there is no real faith; there is no loving God and loving neighbor.

Humility, you see, is nothing less than reality, a clear understanding of the relationship between a loving Creator and His creature, the object of the Almighty's love.

Indeed, without humility there is only the arrogance of empty pride, and no hope of salvation.