The WORD in ADVENT - Second Friday
December 9, 2022: Isaiah 48: 17-19; Matthew 11: 16-19
If we had noticed carefully these days, there is a constant reference in the Gospel this week to John the Baptist. From last Sunday, the Gospel and the preface keep presenting to us the figure of John the Baptist, to challenge us regarding how prepared we are for the Coming of the Lord!
Today's Word draws our attention to the difference between "being childish" and "being child-like." Unless you become like a child you will not enter the Reign of God - but that in no way means you become or remain childish! Jesus gives a simple example - being childish is being so centered on yourself that you wish everything around you happens just as you wish and everyone does exactly what you wish... and said literally, that every one dances to your tunes!
Being childlike, instead, is being prophetic, being like the persons of God who abandon everything into the hands of God with total confidence in God and in God alone.
Another typical quality of children - that they are single minded. You tell them, 'do this', they are all taken up with that until they do that - their entire mind is occupied with that. Look at the mindset of John the Baptist... or Jesus for that matter... so single minded in their faithfulness to the One who had sent them, and the mission entrusted to them respectively. Another prophetic character in them - like a child who is totally occupied with that one task entrusted to him or her!
Let us be like children, and grow to be more and more child-like; let us single mindedly walk in the path God has planned for us, with our hands in the hands of God. Let us not remain childish, looking for our immediate happiness but grow to be child-like, prophetic and God-loving. Let us distance ourselves from unutile childishness to a real spirit of the Reign, becoming more and more child-like!