“…receives not me but the One who sent me”
Jesus says in the Gospel, “Whoever receives one child such as this in my name, receives me; and whoever receives me, receives not me but the One who sent me.”
Are we as mere humans able to receive God? Yes. “The history of salvation is God’s gradual communication of himself to humanity, which reaches its summit in Jesus Christ. God the Father, in the Word made man, wishes to share his own life with everyone: in short, he wants to communicate himself. This divine self-communication takes place in the Holy Spirit, the bond of love between eternity and time, the Trinity and history. If God opens himself to man in his Spirit, man, on the other hand, is created as a subject capable of accepting the divine self-communication. Man — as the tradition of Christian thought maintains — is “capax Dei”: capable of knowing God and of receiving the gift he makes of himself. Indeed, created in the image and likeness of God (cf. Gn 1:26), he is able to live a personal relationship with him and to respond with loving obedience to the covenant relationship offered to him by his Creator.” [1]
Our goal is to receive God. How do we accomplish this goal? To receive God, we must receive Jesus. How do we receive Jesus? To receive the least, the lowliest, in the name of Jesus, is to receive Christ Himself.
What does it mean to receive “in the name of Jesus”? This means to receive each person, even the lowliest child, as if they were Jesus Himself. This attitude was perfectly practiced by Saint Catherine of Siena. When the Saint was once asked by a priest how she was able to lovingly and patiently serve her family so well, she said that she pretended that her mom was the Blessed Virgin Mary, her father Saint Joseph, and her siblings the baby Jesus Himself.
Who in our life can we receive in the name of Christ?
How are children like Jesus? Children are an example of the evangelical councils: poverty, chastity, and obedience. They are poor, for they depend on others for everything. They are pure in both thought and deed. The innocence of a child must be protected. They are obedient, for they must rely on the wisdom of others to guide them. Our Lord said, “Foxes have dens and birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to rest his head.” [2] Although Jesus is God, He humbled Himself, thus depending on others for simple necessities like shelter and food. Jesus was innocent and pure of heart, “like a lamb led to the slaughter or a sheep before the shearers, he was silent and opened not his mouth…” [3] Jesus was obedient, “who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped. Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death even death on a cross.” [4]
Give practical examples of how we can practice poverty, chastity, and obedience?
How is Jesus ignored in our society? Many times Jesus is pushed away and He becomes the farthest on our list of concerns and the farthest thing from our mind. The Lord asks us to love even those farthest away, and in loving those farthest away, we love Him. “The Lord asks us to love as he does, even our enemies, to make ourselves the neighbor of those farthest away, and to love children and the poor as Christ himself. The Apostle Paul has given an incomparable depiction of charity: “charity is patient and kind, charity is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Charity does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Charity bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” [5] “The sure way of meeting Jesus, and through him the Father, is always that of humility and of loving service of the little, the humble, the poor, without recoiling when on this road we meet the cross, just as our Lord met it.” [6]
Like a child, the humanity and simplicity of Jesus is evident. Mysteriously it is in the simplicity of His humanity that His divinity is revealed. It is under the simple appearance of Bread and Wine that Our Lord reveals in substance, His Body and Blood.
In this Gospel Jesus starts with a child and then ends with God. He points to the most simple on earth and ends with the sublime God in heaven. Jesus is the link between earth and heaven. The movie For Greater Glory begins with the poem:
Between heaven and earth
Between light and dark
Between faith and sin
Lies only my heart
Lies God and only my heart
It is Jesus Christ that who brings us from earth to heaven, darkness to light, and sin to faith. How does He do this? It is our heart that lies in the middle of these realities, and thus Christ desires to be in the middle to live and work within our heart and it is within our heart that He accomplished the will of the Father. As Saint Augustine says in the Spiritual Reading, “Now it is a part of the Christians strength not only to do good works but also to endure the sufferings that threaten.” The Christian lives in the middle between earth and heaven, darkness and light, sin and faith. He must pursue the good of heaven, while avoiding the evil of the world.
In the Old Testament, Jacob had a dream of a ladder or staircase reaching from earth to heaven in which the angels ascended and descended. “Then he had a dream: a stairway rested on the ground, with its top reaching to the heavens; and God’s messengers were going up and down on it.” [7] Jesus is the ladder “rested on the ground” in His humanity while “reaching to the heavens” in His divinity. It is through Jesus that we climb to heaven. “In the Gospels, this manifestation is no longer seen veiled in a dream but is conveyed through the development of a human life. Jesus fulfills in himself what Jacob's ladder had symbolized: the Son of Man stands on the earth as One whose head touches heaven. The angels going up and down enable us to understand the continuous exchange between heaven and earth that is fulfilled in the mystery of the Incarnation.” [8]
The mission of Jesus is to connect man with God, earth with heaven, the temporal with the eternal. It is the Church, guided by the Holy Spirit, who continues to connect man with God. It is through the Church that we are able to live out the prayer, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” [9] “It would not be inconsistent with the truth to understand the words, ‘Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,’ to mean: ‘in the Church as in our Lord Jesus Christ himself’; or ‘in the Bride who has been betrothed, just as in the Bridegroom who has accomplished the will of the Father.’” [10]
Amazing Bridges From Around The World
Pontifex is Latin for “bridge-builder”. Pontifex is a name given to the bishops and Pontifex Maximus given to the Bishop of Rome, the Pope. This is why we still call the Pope, the supreme Pontif, Pontif coming from the word Pontifex. The bishops in persona Christi are the bridge builders between earth and heaven. The bishops and Pope as head of the Church continue to connect man with God and accomplish the will of God “on earth as it is in Heaven”.
[1] Saint John Paul II; August 26, 1998
[2] Luke 9:58
[3] Isaiah 53:7
[4] Philippians 2:6-8
[5] Catechism of the Catholic Church - 1825
[6] Father Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen, O.C.D., Divine Intimacy
[7] Genesis 28:12
[8] Jean Galot, S.J.; Angelic Witness: Uniting Heaven and Earth
[9] Matthew 6:10
[10] Catechism of the Catholic Church - 2827