Hi everyone, and welcome to Weekly Homilies with Father Mark Suslenko, Pastor of SS. Isidore and Maria Parish in Glastonbury, Connecticut. We are part of the Catholic Archdiocese of Hartford. I'm Carol Vassar, parish director of communications, and this is Episode 26 of Season 6 for the Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time: July 9, 2023. Our Gospel reading is from Matthew, Chapter 11, verses 25-30
At that time Jesus exclaimed: "I give praise to you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for although you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned you have revealed them to little ones. Yes, Father, such has been your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal him."
"Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will find rest for yourselves. For my yoke is easy, and my burden light."
The Gospel of the Lord.
“Living Radical Trust” by Father Mark S. Suslenko, Pastor, SS. Isidore and Maria Parish, Glastonbury, Connecticut
Jesus often holds up children and little ones as examples of the kind of vessel necessary to receive the kingdom of God. He often remarks that children and little ones have a take on God's kingdom that's not found in the learned and the clever. And so, why do you suppose this would be the case?
As we delve into answers to that question, I'm sure there are many and varied answers that could explain why Jesus holds up children and little ones as images to emulate. But there are two today that I would like to emphasize over the others.
The first is because of faith, and the second is because of courage, faith, and courage.
Saint Oscar Romero remarks about faith, and he says, "Faith is like a child who, when its father's arms are wide open, jumps into those arms knowing that those arms would catch it and not let it fall." and he says this is what faith is like. A child running into the open arms of its father, confident and knowing that those arms will catch it and not let it fall.
Saint Oscar Romero says that Christ is looking for that same kind of faith in us. This fundamental, radical trust, that regardless of what happens to us, we will not fall and will always be caught and held.
Children emulate that so well. They have this fundamental trust in life that, as we move through the stages of life, sometimes gets eroded in us. And the innocence that is necessary to have that fundamental trust is eroded away, sometimes because of life circumstances and a myriad options that can always creep in and erode that trust. But we find ourselves becoming less trustful as we get older, oftentimes, and we lose that ability to simply invest ourselves with that attitude of trust into the reality of God. We become overly analytical. We become more head-orientated and less interior-orientated.
And courage; now, if we listen to that word, courage, perhaps we are saying to ourselves, well, what does a little one or a child have to do with courage? After all, courage has to do with resilience. It has to deal with strength. It has to deal with being able to persevere in light of conflict or adversity. That courage has something to do with an interior will or a determination to succeed.
How can a child emulate that? A part of our difficulty is in the definition of courage. We associate that word with all of those acts of the will: resilience, self-determination. we look at courage as associated with the warrior who has to accomplish a mission and do so without looking back. That courage has something to do with enduring and getting through a crisis or a difficulty.
But the word courage doesn't really come from any of those sources. The word courage itself comes from two Latin words. And the first is a, the Latin word for heart, and the second is the Latin word for action.
So in its beginnings and its inception, courage really has to do with an action of the heart, not with an action of the will, but an action of the heart, of being vulnerable enough to throw ourselves both feet into existence, into the world, and do what the moment requires us to do, with absolute trust and confidence.
And so if we bring that back to St. Oscar Romero's image of the child and its father jumping into the father's arms, we can see that at play there, too. Not only does that child require radical trust in order to jump into the father's arms without any care or concern, but it also requires the going forth with both feet and investment of one's heart in that action of jumping; that the child is present to the moment, vulnerable enough to allow itself to encounter that space knowing that it's going to be held and caught.
So, in essence, what Jesus is asking of us and why he holds up children in the little one, he said, be like them, who go out into the world with this radical trust, who go out into the world with both feet present for the moment, vulnerable and doing what the Gospel calls them to do; to live that embodiment of the Gospel. Because that's what Jesus did when we look at the way he lived and moved amongst the people; when he associated with the tax collector, the sinner, the prostitute, the adulterer; when he associated with the outcast, those from a different town; when he associated with those who were lame and crippled, all those folks that society says around the margin and to be avoided, Jesus went out and encountered.
And what did he do? He simply was present with them. He sat with them. He ate with them. He talked with them. His whole being was available to them. He didn't go with a self-help book or the prescription for what they should do that they're not doing currently. He simply sat with them, and that presence was transformative. It brought intense healing. And isn't that what happens in our own particular situation with folks? How often is it the case that we might be going through a struggle? We might be encountering some difficulty. They may be carrying burdens and an innocent child comes into our midst and does something very childlike, very spontaneous, and breaks into that space, and it breaks the ice of the moment and brings us to a different place, a place of healing.
How often it is the case when someone may be carrying a burden, suffering some kind of burden, or a catastrophe or struggle: going through an illness or encountering a death? And as we look at that person, we have no words really to help them. There's no words to console them. We can't change what they're going through. We can't give them the advice that would fix it. But what can we do? We can go into the space of their lives with our whole being, put ourselves out there and be present, and simply be with that person, even if it's just holding their hands and crying with them. The very quality of our presence is transformative, and Jesus knew this. And he said as I am present to the world, so you be present to the world, but it requires this radical trust, this faith, and this courage, this going forth with the heart, into the world, and into those people who are so broken and broken, they still are.
If you look around the world, so many still today face each night without having sufficient food. So many in our world face uncertainty because they live in a war-torn country. So many people in our world are still victimized and abused, sold, and trafficked. So many in our world still face the burden of prejudice who can't seem to get out from under the labels. So many in our world are still suffering, and what we don't realize often is that in all of the pains of our world, however they express themselves however they are visualized, Jesus Christ's passion plays out in every one of those stories. Whenever a tear is shed, the passion of Christ is revealed again because Jesus suffers with those who suffer.
And he's asking us to do the same, to go out with both feet and suffer with those who suffer. And that's a difficult task to do because all of us are consumed with the complexity of our lives and our own agendas. To truly be present to someone requires that I put my stuff aside and see their lives as being more important than mine. That the quality of presence and being vulnerable and open requires that I step aside and put you first, and it's hard to create the space to allow for that openness to be available. But Jesus says you must.
And we do a great job responding to the needs. You know, when we have a diaper drive, we get more diapers than we can ever imagine. When we have a coat drive for kids, they pour in all these wonderful, generous donations. When the food bank needs more groceries, we respond with a plentiful of generosity; regardless of what need presents itself to us, we're there to respond.
But sometimes, we keep that all at a distance. You know, we respond to the need and then we just move on, and we go back into the privacy of our lives. Did we ever stop and think why so many young people cannot afford to buy diapers for their children? Do we ever stop and think why so many folks are still falling through the cracks and homeless? Did we ever stop and think why we can't get out from under the dynamics of war and why so many are so hungry? Have we ever stopped to think why some have so much and some have so little? Have we ever stopped and thought of why injustice is still such a problem?
You see, there are reasons for all of these things. They're not just happening because, and Jesus says, it's important to walk with folks so that you understand why they encounter what they encounter and why they are where they are. And so we try to do that through education, through immersing ourselves in experience. When we bring food to the food kitchen and actually sit down with folks in need, we learn a little bit about their lives, but we still have to learn more. And that program that we're having in September, Just Faith, it's the beginning of an ongoing series, is an attempt for us to do precisely that, an opportunity to get underneath the reasons for all of this stuff. And this one in September, it focuses explicitly on hunger and why there is so much food scarcity in the world, and why we can't feed everybody. And then, understanding the reasons, we then can understand the faces behind.
And so Jesus wants each one of us to go out into the world with this radical trust, with courage, investing ourselves wholly and fully into the needs that we find ourselves encountering, and as he looks at each one of us, we who are his disciples, he looks at us, and does he see an open door or does he see a brick wall?
Father Mark Suslenko is the pastor of SS. Isidore and Maria Parish in Glastonbury, Connecticut. Learn more about our parish community at www.isidoreandmaria.org. And follow us on social media: Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Our music comes free of charge from Blue Dot Sessions in Fall River, Massachusetts. I’m Carol Vassar. Thanks for joining us.