Wednesday of the Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time
The gospel revealed to the childlike people
At that time Jesus said in reply, “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 the childlike. 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. Mt 11,25-27
By the time when Jesus ascended the mountain to pray, no one will ever know what his dialogue with the Father was, but the Holy Spirit who certainly has been through, as it has always been in the Trinity. We believe that they talked of the mysteries of the creation and of the kingdom of the heaven, the ultimate destiny of the man, of the necessity of the cross, of the resurrection, of the choice of the Apostles, of the sending of the Holy Spirit and of the time of the church. These are all topics of which there were traces in the gospels and these are the same “things” revealed to the childlike people and hidden to the wise and intelligent persons, which are mentioned in the today gospel. If we ask why “these things” are revealed only to the childlike people, the today Gospel answers: “Because the Father so decided”. It is an answer which we accept, but then the question is: why the Lord has been pleased to reveal these things just to the childlike people? We think that there is no other answer than this: because the childlike people have the humility to approach the gospel by listening and waiting that the Holy Spirit, which has previously been the intermediary between Jesus and the Father and then it has lit the authors of these sacred texts, also illuminates their understanding of the revealed Word. The gospel in fact, like all the Holy Scriptures, is only the message of God’s word which arrives to us, but this is much bigger, fuller and deeper. The Holy Scriptures are like the powder milk which, to return to be drinkable milk and precious food for the humans, needs to receive back the water from where it started. So it is with the Holy Scriptures, which, to return to be revealed word of God, need to receive back the lives of the characters who have lived it: Abraham, Moses, Mary, Jesus Christ, Peter, Paul. This process of revivification of the sacred texts can only occur in the childlike people, who have the humility to listen and to wait patiently for the Holy Spirit to explain it to them. The wise and the intelligent persons, on the contrary, to understand it need their culture and their rational capacity and they want to understand quickly. They are not able to listen and neither to rely solely to the ability which the Holy Spirit has to explain “these things” in the silence.