Kids are rich in what matters to God

Homily
14th Sunday of Ordinary Time A
3 July 2011

Kids are rich in what matters to God. We adults have to admit this. Jesus challenges us to admit that we learn more from kids than they learn from us. It is a humbling admission, but one that comes through clearly in the Gospel, when Jesus says the secrets of the kingdom of heaven belong to little ones, not the wise and the learned, and that unless we become like little children, we will not enter the Kingdom of heaven. We have to face it. We have more to learn from them than they have to learn from us.

Which is why countries that are no longer having children are in trouble in more ways than one. Countries with a one-child policy are losing touch with what a family looks and feels like, for a one-child policy puts an end to relationships with aunts and uncles and cousins, because those relationships no longer exist. The one-child policy virtually ensure that most people will spend their dying years without family support. Societies that are no longer marrying and having kids are following a recipe for economic disaster, to be sure. Yet Jesus points us toward an even greater poverty. Children are rich in what matters to God - faith, hope and love. They have the keys to the secrets of the kingdom. Spiritually doomed as well is the society that tries to eliminate its dependence upon children.

This is not to say that children aren't a lot of work. It's not to say that children don't need to be taught many things by adults. Of course they do, and raising a family well is as difficult a task as ever, and not for the faint of heart. This week I was blessed to witness the launching of a new ministry in the Archdiocese called Prayer and Action. 4 of our 31 seminarians teamed with four college ladies in guiding teenagers through a prayer and mission experience right here in the Archdiocese, the program being hosted at Sacred Heart Parish in Emporia. As I supervised the program and provided encouragement to our staff, it was easy to see where the teenagers still needed to learn many things. They were barely awake for the morning Mass and rosary. At the worksites, the teenagers had to be taught how to use every tool from a paintbrush to a handsaw. They weren't great at picking up after themselves. As a vocation director, I lose touch with parish and family life sometimes, as you can see. I observed as well that few of them grew up like I did, throwing bales, hauling irrigation pipe and working hogs, so let's just say they were a little work brittle and needed lots of encouragement. They didn't always put forth the same effort cleaning up a yard that they do on the sports fields where they excel. The young people needed to be coached. Yet at the end of the week, I can easily tell you that I learned a lot from these young experts. They were better than me at forming new relationships and friendships, better than me at receiving and giving love, especially to those people whose houses we refurbished. They were better than me at seeing where God was present and at work in thousands of little ways.

It was true that I was good at working hard, and teaching kids how to use a shovel. I know how to get around in the world, living in the flesh as St. Paul calls it. Like many adults, I have become good at learning some skills, and I have gained much wisdom through experience in how to manage time, and resources and relationships. I was much better than the kids at being alert for the morning rosary and Mass. These are all things the kids needed to learn, and I was an example. But as I try to become more wise and learned, the kids taught me what only kids can teach us - how to be vulnerable. That is why Jesus points us toward children - they are experts at being dependent. Jesus proclaims himself to be meek and humble of heart. In Zechariah he is prophesized to be the king who established an eternal kingdom without the use of a single weapon, a king whose only worldly asset is a borrowed donkey. To be children of this kingdom, we have to remain on his path of sacrificial love, which is nothing less than that path of vulnerability that allows the flourishing of faith, hope and love.

As we continue to teach our children how to get along in the world, and fulfill our responsibility to help them to be successful, let us not forget our responsibility to learn more from them than they learn from us. In many ways, their world is the real world, for the yoke of independence and self-sufficiency that adults easily take on and get wrapped up in, gets both heavier and more illusory as we grow older, while Jesus' yoke of dependence, vulnerability and sacrificial love gets lighter and allows us to grow younger the more we let him carry it in us, with us and through us. On the surface, Jesus' yoke seems impossible. Yet the more we carry it, we see that it is truly lighter than the alternative.