Attentive to Whom We Receive

Human beings, especially adults, have an innate attentiveness to children. This has been shown even scientifically. We are naturally attuned to hear the voice of a crying baby over other noises, and people innately know to watch their language or what they’re discussing, if a child is present. If a person sees a child struggling with something, like opening a door or carrying a heavy package, they are more likely to stop and be of help. None of this should be surprising, of course, but it does show us something interesting: we treat children – even those who are not our own – differently than we tend to treat others.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus tries to get the disciples’ attention by placing a child in their midst. He has been telling them, both in last week’s Gospel and again today, that he is going to Jerusalem to suffer and die in order to rise after three days. But they aren’t getting the message. They are too busy discussing their own achievements, their own greatness, and most likely arguing with each other about it. They probably are doing exactly what James warns us about in today’s second reading: existing in “jealousy and selfish ambition,” with conflicts and covetousness and envy dominating their attitude.

Perhaps we can see now the point that Jesus makes at the end of the Gospel. He doesn’t correct their attitude by words so much as by drawing their attention to the presence of that child. How silly they must have felt with all of their boasting and jealous ambition, compared to the tender innocence of the child in front of them. His point is this: true greatness comes not from striving to inflate ourselves, by focusing on what we have achieved and what others haven’t, but by adopting an attentive ness to those who are lowly and seeking to serve them.

Fritz von Uhde, "And Calling a Child to Him..." (c. 1904)

Notice that this is not the Gospel where Jesus encourages us to be childlike ourselves, to become like children in order to inherit the kingdom of heaven. That certainly helps! But what he’s really saying here is that we must seek to receive in his name those who are children, and all others like them: those who are vulnerable, who are insignificant in the eyes of the world, those who are not playing the game of trying to get ahead, those who are the “nobodies” of the world. It’s with precisely those folks that Jesus identifies because he will be one of them himself, especially when he is rejected, accused, arrested, tortured, and put to death. That’s why he tells us that whenever we receive them – whenever we are attentive to them, seek to serve them, try to meet their needs and thereby accord them the dignity they have – when we receive them, we really receive him, and his Father who sent him.

This Gospel gives us a lot to reflect upon. If a child asked for our help, or if we saw one in need, we would assist right away; and if Jesus himself were the one in need of aid, even more so. But why do we fail to see the presence of Jesus in those who are childlike: the poor, the migrant, the addict, the mentally ill, the teenager who is rebelling, the spouse who is emotionally frayed, the young person who wishes to be validated, the elderly person who is lonely and forlorn. In each of these, and more, Jesus offers us the chance to turn outward from ourselves a bit – to detach from our own inward self-centeredness and our striving to be great – and to receive him and to serve him, to love him, in the presence of those with whom he identifies. And eventually this should become our default way of relating to everyone: to be truly great by serving everyone, especially the least.

Friends, in this and every Eucharist, the Lord becomes humbly present for us. Under the appearances of Bread and Wine, he nonetheless draws us to profess our belief that what we see, and touch, and receive is really him: his Body and his Blood. And he gives us this gift not just for ourselves, but so that with his Presence in us we can then go and find his presence elsewhere, in the needy, the lowly, the childlike, all of those with whom he identifies – so that by receiving them we might receive him, by loving them we will love him.