Wednesday, July 15, 2020

Filius revelare (Mt. 11:27)



Humility is the key to understand the mystery of the Kingdom of God. Isaiah describes beautifully about humility in 10: 15, “Does the ax claim more credit than the man who wields it, or the saw more strength than the man who handles it? As though a staff controlled those who raise it, or the club could raise what is not made of wood!” Moreover, in the Gospel, Matthew 11:27, Jesus Christ is humbler before His Father. Jesus knows from whom He has come to the world and all people that Father has entrusted Him to lead.
Humility is about the ability to listen by heart. When Jesus Christ came to the world and spread the kingdom of God, Jesus in his meditation recognized that the wise men rejected him and simple people received him. Jesus in Matthew 11:25 said, “I bless you, Father, Lord of heaven and of earth, for hiding these things from the learned and the clever and revealing them to mere children”.
The question is why the learned and the clever cannot understand about salvation that comes from God and simple people can easily accept Him and His teaching about the Kingdom of God? The answer is that the wise men receive Jesus’s teaching with their intellectual arrogance and simple people accept Jesus by their heart. Simple people can listen by heart to understand the mystery of the Kingdom of God. The heart is home to the Word of the Lord. Those who keep only the Word of the Lord in their head cannot comprehend why Jesus comes to the world to spread the good news.
Intellect and faith are like two wings that bring us to enter the Kingdom of God. To accept the gospel, on one hand, we need human thought and on the other hand, we need trust. Those who deny faith can be falling to rationalization and those who deny intellect can be falling into believing something blindly and immerse in believing the wrong truth. Therefore, reasoning helps us to understand our faith. On the other hand, we need faith, for we cannot explain many things or we can say it is a mystery.
Jesus’ presence and the Kingdom of God can be understood if we welcome Him in our hearts. It can happen if every man chooses a humble way to personally experience God’s presence in his or her daily life. We pray may God open our hearts to be more understanding about God’s presence in Jesus Christ and let the word of the Lord dwelt in us.

By Fr. Aris Mada, SVD

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