16 July 2025 – Wednesday of the 15th odd week
HOMILY
The Gospel we have just read (which forms a whole with the one we will read tomorrow) includes some points of contact with the Magnificat of the Virgin Mary, which are very interesting and extremely revealing.
When Jesus gives glory to His Father for revealing to the little ones the things hidden from the wise, the little ones He speaks of are His disciples. And these were not naive children. They were adult men who knew the ways of the world: Matthew, the tax collector, knew how to make money; Jude, the Zealot, knew the art of guerrilla warfare; Peter, James and John were fishermen who knew how to steer their boat on the lake and cast their nets. They had given up everything to become disciples of Jesus. When He invites them – and us – to simplicity of heart, He is not inviting us to a childish attitude or a childish kind of spirituality. He is inviting us to a very demanding form of poverty of heart. He invites us to follow Him as disciples and therefore to abandon all our sources of security, especially our thirst for power, just as His disciples had abandoned everything to follow Him.
Similarly, Moses, after being powerful in the house of Pharaoh of Egypt, became a fugitive in the desert; and when he received from God the mission to free His people, he exclaimed: ‘Who am I (to accomplish such a thing)?’ And God does not answer him that He will make him powerful, but simply says, ‘I will be with you.’
The great characteristic of a child is its powerlessness. Children can be, in their own way, as intelligent, loving, etc. as adults. But because they have not yet accumulated knowledge, material possessions and social relationships, they are powerless. As soon as we become adults, we want to exercise power and control: over our own lives, over other people, over material things, and sometimes even over God. This is what Jesus asks us to renounce when He asks us to be like little children.
A useful exercise in self-knowledge might be to examine the various forms in which our thirst for power is expressed in the various aspects of our lives, and how we defend that power. Let us then contemplate our Lord, who came not as a powerful king on His throne, but as a humble and powerless prophet on a donkey.
Let us also look at the smallness of His most holy servant, His mother, and like Her, let us sing with renewed joy and hope: ‘He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly.’ And may we all sing together one day, for ever and ever: ‘Blessed be the God of Israel, for He has looked upon the lowliness of His handmaids and servants.’
Armand Veilleux