The Guardian Angels and We children

THE WORD AND THE FEAST

October 2, 2019: Thanking God for the Guardian Angels

Exodus 23: 20-23; Matthew 18: 1-5,10

One of the earliest things we are taught as children is about the presence and the guidance of the Guardian Angels - whom we celebrate today! Somehow, personally, every time that I have heard of the guardian angels since childhood, I have felt a kind of childlike sentiment within me! 

However, that sentiment is not childish but childlike! Because, without a childlike simplicity, a constant presence of someone may look like an interference, an intrusion, a policing! The world teaches us this attitude, insisting on 'personal freedom', 'individual privacy', 'information security' - everything taken in a highly analogical sense today!

Instead, to look at the other as a pleasant company on the journey, a person to share one's journey with, a person to rely on, someone to have recourse to in need - these involve humility that is so natural to a child, the child would never even be aware that he or she is humble, it is so natural. 

When we truly sport a disposition as that of a child, we shall find ourselves longing for that presence of the Lord, we will hang on every word from the Lord and remain faithful to the Lord in obedience - as the Lord instructs in the first reading today! 

Unless we become like children we cannot enter the Reign of God... Recall the reflection shared two days ago, which re-echoes today's: though it may sound a paradox, let us grow up to be children, only then can we inherit the Reign.