Saturday of the Nineteenth Week in Ordinary Time Yr 1 2025

Peter H. Davids

Ordinary Time • Sermon • Submitted 6 months ago • Presented 6 months ago

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We humans like to do it our way, including when it comes to religion, which is often a mix and match, whether with God and money, pleasure, power, and honor, or with God and other spiritual practices. It does not work. Jesus points to humility as they way into the kingdom. Whereas the disciples saw children as unimportant, Jesus saw them as receptive, attentive to his stories, and open to his blessing. They were attracted to him. They were, at least then, single-minded. So we should put not block in the way of children and keep the kingdom open to them and we should cry for the most sheep of our culture, who want to do it their own way under their control and so miss the humility before Jesus that would open the doors of the kingdom to them.

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Title

Loyalty and Humility

Outline

Human Beings Love to Mix and Match

One of my former students is a successful businesswoman who, when she was feeling down, went outside with a book of her favorite prayers, her crystals, and various other chants and the like from various religions and had a spiritual time hoping her spirits would lift. That is what Israel would try. It would not abandon the Yahweh cult, but add to it Ba’al and Asheroth and any other cult that seemed to work, including seances and spiritism. Yahweh will protect us, but Ba’al is good for rain and this one for fertility.

Joshua warned them. It would be about as successful as a man or woman is who has multiple loves other than their spouse. No, Israel insisted in its fervor, we will serve the Lord. But the minute Joshua dies and the elders who knew him, in comes syncretism.

And we find that in the Church today, sometimes in the mixture of religious and spiritual practices, sometimes in mixing the love of money, pleasure, power, and honor with their worship. People do it their way, and they wonder why God does not save them.

The opposite of that is the humility of children

Now I know that children can be proud or boastful or intransigent, but especially at younger ages they believe what they are told by authority figures and do so in a simple manner. So these children are brought, presumably by parents to Jesus for a blessing. No, say the disciples, he has no time for that, only for important people. But Jesus says, “Let them come to me.” “No not hinder them.” Or don’t try to teach them that they are not important to God. “The kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” “Such as these?” Yes, those open to me, to God alone. Those not trying to make it up themselves. Those ready to receive even if they do not understand.

And so, Sisters,

On the one hand, we must beware of teaching negative attitudes towards God to children. We represent God to them. On the other hand, cry out to the Lord for those you know who are trying to save themselves or are bowing down to everything and maybe to God as well. Self-made does not work. Instead we must ourselves become childlike before God: open, receptive, listening, believing and ever ready to bring little love gifts to him out of a single-hearted devotion.

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