Dec 5: Unless You Become like Children

Edward Hicks: The Peaceable Kingdom

Second Sunday of Advent
Reading I: Is 11:1-10

The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them (NRSV, Is 11:6).

Lord God, your Son Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” And again, "Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs." When your prophet Isaiah envisaged the end time, he projected it upon the holy mountain that is Jerusalem. It was to be a kingdom without conflict, a kingdom of peace and harmony, much like the author of Genesis read back into our beginnings in the Garden of Eden. Isaiah wrote, “The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them.”

Everything the child has, he receives as gift from his parents. The child can make no claim in his own name for being the source of anything. He cannot only say “thank you,” for all that he has and everything that he is.

Father, help us to recognize that each and every one of us, of whatever age, remains forever and ever your child. In truth it is our highest dignity. Still, to be your child is to recognize that nothing that we have and nothing that we are have their beginning in ourselves. Everything comes from you.

Granted, when we respond to the gift of your divine life in which you challenge us to grow at every moment, that life becomes truly our own. It can enable us to foster the kingdom of heaven here in this world. It empowers us to love and serve one another. It even transforms us so that physical death becomes, not enemy, but sister to us. Nevertheless your divine life, which we take up and truly make our own, remains always gift, a precious gift indeed, but gift nevertheless.

How foolish, Father, we often are in the talents we flaunt and the works in which we take such delight. That we may ever truly be your children, Father, we do not pray that you transform us and take us back to some earlier stage in our earthly life, be it physical, psychological or moral. No, we are who we are at this very moment. Rather we pray that in our present condition we may accept the unconditional forgiven for our sins that you always offer us and that, accepting that forgiveness, we may embrace and grow in your divine life. May we also recognize ever more fully our total dependence upon you for all that we have and all that we are and thus live as the children that you call us to be, children worthy to live in your kingdom.

Through Christ our Lord. Amen.