Today’s gospel treats the issue that never goes out of style: vanity, gossip, pride, greed, or the seven capital sins that begin in our desire to be great. The desire to feel important is one of the two most primitive desires of the human being. Moreover, the popular saying that the heart of man is insatiably ambitious: “The more you have, the more you want.”
Different from our manner of thinking and hearing, Jesus never looks at a person, but always looks to the person. When we see someone, we do not perceive what is happening in that person nor what he or she is thinking and feeling. We only get to know this when we put ourselves in the other’s place. Jesus was then the greatest of all psychologists that existed. He probed the heart and was capable of being that person.
In today’s passage, He probed the heart of the disciples and felt that they asked themselves who among the twelve would be the greatest. They were human as are we, and they stressed their position in the group. Notice that Jesus does not put them on the same level. Jesus admits that it may be possible that some are greater than others. There exists a hierarchy in the Kingdom of Heaven. But this hierarchy is the inverse of our own.
Here in this world, the greater your position, the more inaccessible you become. In the hierarchy of Jesus, the more accessible you become, the greater your position. See how it is doubly reversed? In this world, you grow and become inaccessible; in the Kingdom of God, you become inaccessible and you grow!
How many persons are afraid and resist in speaking with you, it is a sign that something is wrong. The first step is to assume it is ok. If you do not assume, you are not going to obtain nor pass to the second step: discovering why? The majority of person wants to interact more, to have more and better friends. But they can only do this if they encounter an opening in their heart. And this can be in the form of a smile, a joke or even you know the name of the person and call them by name. And this already is the third step: open yourself. In little time, you already are going to be so busy, I am not going to relate how much will be your responsibility.
The missionary of the Kingdom, therefore, cannot depreciate anyone. The child that Jesus takes in his arms in this passage represents not only the children, but all those that are excluded in this world.
Jesus reveals to us today the novelty of the project of God: it is a world of justice, of full life for all, abolishing the priviledges of those that concentrate power beginning with the accumulation of the riches or religious prestige. One perceives, in the Gospels that the disciples coming from Judaism always would have difficulties understanding it. They were taken by messianic, nationalistic ideology. As Jesus spoke to those over the weakness of human condition, vulnerable to suffering and to death, alluding to the end that would happen in Jerusalem and that the disciples would not understand and later in following they pass to discuss who would be the greater, thinking that Jesus would be about to conquer the power, so also He wants to speak to us.
Jesus presents us as an example and over all, condition that we may be greater in His Kingdom the pure and simple look of a child. The child as symbol and model of humility of the Kingdom of Heaven. We are called to live dedicated to service, without pretensions to the power and the priviledges.
Father, that I see always to detach myself in service to others, in a special way to those most in need. Therefore in this consists my true grandeur of disciple. And in this search I may be simple, pure and humble as a child.
Father Bantu Mendonça