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Matthew 11:25-27 for
Wednesday of the Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time
July 15, the Memorial
of Saint Bonaventure
Today’s
Gospel shows Christ giving thanks to his Father that the childlike
have received knowledge of the Father and of the Son who shows the Father to
them.
The childlike of the Gospel are open for and
keen on what God offers.
God
chooses to let them know him.
He shapes
them into living signs of himself.
The Son of
God became a man of flesh and blood who HAS the deepest and truest KNOWLEDGE
of the Father, and IS the deepest and truest living SIGN
of the Father.
Christ is
the man fully open to the Father, and he truly shows us the Father.
From
Christ we can receive all the depth, reality and knowledge of God.
He says it
in his Gospel today: ALL THINGS have
been handed over to ME by my FATHER.
Christ is OPEN ALL THE
WAY to everything his Father gives him.
You and I, because we are sinners, are not yet fully
open to the Father.
Christ the
Son of God, Christ a man of flesh and blood, Christ the sinless one, is the
only man who HAS
all knowledge of the Father, and IS all knowledge of the Father: no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom
the Son wishes to reveal him.
God gives
all of himself to us by way of his Son in his Body and Blood.
In the
Body and Blood of Christ, God gives himself to us, and opens himself to us.
Through the Body and Blood of Christ, God the
Spirit pours upon us, into us, cleanses, saves, restores, fulfills, hallows and
glorifies us as signs, images and likenesses of God.
To do this
for us God gives his all.
To take in
that gift, we need to turn our backs on sin, turn our faces to God, becoming childlike before him, opening and offering ourselves to him in lowliness and
truth.
That childlike openness comes through in the
teachings of Saint Bonaventure.
In writing
his “Journey of the Mind to God,” Bonaventure told the ways of those whom
today’s Gospel calls childlike.
Calling to
mind some of Saint Bonaventure’s words about childlike openness to God, let us
take these words to heart, namely: full
attention... surrender... longing of the will... prayer.
Turn.
Love. Repeat.
