Homily – Saturday Daily Mass 2014/08/16 - Matthew 19:13-15 - Let the Children Come to Me.

Homily – Saturday Daily Mass 

2014/08/16 Saturday of the Nineteenth Week in Ordinary Time

Matthew 19:13-15 View Readings
Deacon David Lewis
Saint Charles Catholic Church, Imperial Beach/San Diego, CA

This last week, as you probably know we lost Robin Williams. The well-known comedian who got his start as Mork from Ork. Among many other movie roles, he played Patch Adams, an adult medical student, who understood the need to heal the emotional as well as the medical, which Patch did through rather unorthodox means. As I recall one scene from the movie, there was Robin Williams as Patch Adams, in a scene set in the children’s cancer ward at a hospital. All the children are lying in their beds, somber and melancholy and then Patch walks in, and begins his visit with one of the girls by cutting a red squeeze ball and attaching it to his nose like a clown. He starts joking with the young patient, and then grabs a couple of swabs and puts them behind his ears like bug antennae and pretends to fly around bouncing off the glass of the window, all the while the children begin to giggle and laugh, and so the healing begins. 

In today’s Gospel, the children were BROUGHT to Jesus, that he might lay his hands on them and pray… they were brought to Jesus, and yet Jesus’ own disciples turned the children away. But Jesus said to "Let them come to me, and do not prevent them; for the Kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.”

I began to imagine myself there with Jesus, trying to imagine who I was in this reading: Have I brought people to Jesus? Or have I been the one that turned people away that were seeking Jesus? Or have I been a child being led to Jesus?

So… Have I brought people to Jesus… Have I attracted people to come to Jesus, have I personally invited anyone? When I look at the ArchBishop of New York, Timothy Cardinal Dolan, I see joy, happiness, and a love of the faith. When I see Father Jim, I see an attractive peace, calm, Father Sam, a life dedicated to service, all examples that lift me closer to God. You can see in them how Jesus brings peace and joy into their lives, and it makes us want what they have.

But… when we put ourselves above others, putting ourselves before others, when we look down at others, we push people away, when we come off as unwelcoming, when we lives as hypocrites, we drive people from Jesus, we turn them away.

We should really be like the children, going towards Jesus, even when it seems unwelcoming. Have I sought out Jesus, perhaps at times to heal things in my life. Whether it was when I desired to quit smoking, or when a loved one was sick, there have been times in my life when I have needed Jesus. But have I also continued toward Jesus when others were telling me not to.

When we look at the Patch Adams character, one of the conflicts in the movie was that Patch’s techniques were not the straight laced, proven techniques that were dry and ordinary as prescribed by those responsible for his training as a Doctor. Instead he healed with love, giving spiritual strength to the patients, to heal through laughter, and joy. While some people have some trouble with laughing and carrying-on in a Church, and perhaps rightfully so, as the Church should be a place of reverence, and the Mass a time of deep reflection and prayer, but what stops us from being joyful Catholics the other 23 hours a day we are not at Mass?

Shouldn’t we be a bit more childlike in the way children make friends with anyone? Shouldn’t we take ourselves just a little less seriously and embrace our flaws as gifts? Shouldn’t we be willing to stop and look at the sky, and see what creations God has made in the clouds in the sky?

Shouldn’t we be skipping towards God in our lives, inviting everyone on our path to join us, ignoring those that discourage us so that we can be with Jesus, so that we can experience the Kingdom of Heaven?