10 December 2025 – Wednesday of the 2nd week of Advent
Isaiah 40:25-31; Matthew 11:28-30
HOMILY
The Gospel we have just read has some points in common with the Magnificat of the Virgin Mary, which are very interesting and extremely revealing.
Jesus invites everyone to take His yoke upon their shoulders and become His disciples because, He says, ‘I am gentle and humble of heart’.
The little ones, the humble, have a very special place in the Gospel. The Father has a special love for them. Mary is one of these little ones, and she proclaims this at the beginning of the Magnificat: ‘My soul magnifies the Lord... for he has looked upon the lowliness of his handmaid.’ The Greek word used here (tapeinôsin) is rendered differently in various translations of the Bible: humility, lowliness, humble condition. Now, it is the corresponding adjective that Jesus uses in today's Gospel when he says that he is gentle and ‘humble’ (tapeinos) of heart. And it is the same word that Mary uses later in her Magnificat, when she says that the Lord has brought down the powerful from their thrones and exalted the ‘lowly’, the humble (tapeinous).
When Jesus gives glory to his Father for revealing to the lowly the things hidden from the wise, the lowly He is referring to are His disciples. And they 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 invites 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 given up everything to follow Him.
The main characteristic of a child is its powerlessness. Children can be, in their own way, just 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, of course, then over other people, then 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 with her, 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 servants.’