July 15, 2020

Christlike Maturity in Childlike Openness


Pixabay / Public Domain.


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.