Let the little ones come to me!

I have been reflecting during the week on the various feasts that have occurred: Therese of Lisieux, Guardian Angels and Francis of Assisi. The common theme in each of these saints is the way that Gospel inverts our priorities and looks at the value of every human life. The emphasis seems to be on being simple, being loving and being hospitable. In making room for others which the world seems common and ordinary we discover how God reaches out in friendship with us. He wants to present to us in what can appear mundane and every day rather in the successful and the spectacular. God desires to encounter us in our daily realities which call us to open our hearts and our lives to the call that brings hope and joy to our world.

The disciples were rebuked because they tried to keep those who wanted to approach God directly and to be touched by the person of Jesus. This may be the most difficult aspect of the Sexual Abuse crisis that besets us. There is a desire to ensure that children are both safe and loved. They need to discover a God who reaches out to them and trusts his life to them. In fact, I sometimes reflect it is the places where this trust has been broken by clergy and those in authority are not just criminal but demonic. Much of what we see in the Royal Commission contains important recommendations that ensure that our Churches are places which help to safeguard the most vulnerable but also provide a place where they can encounter God in their brokenness. These recommendations point to the reality that no one can be considered to able to minister on their own without the support of a community. In fact, when we try to go it alone we find ourselves becoming judgemental and alienated from each other.  This is why we also need to provide the structures which allow the Good News to be most easily lived. 

Yet I fear that structures alone will not do it alone unless we have a spirituality which enables us to confront the evils within and the evils without. The call to prayer is not just a placebo to make us feel good but rather an encounter with the living God. This means that we need to be honest in our prayer about what we truly need and what God truly desires. Sometimes it can seem that we play hide and seek with God or that he plays hide and seek with us. We look for God in all the familiar places where we have been discovered before and then at times come away disappointed that God seems to have moved on. Yet God also pursues us to find out where we have hidden and put on a disguise so that he cannot recognise us. We need to discover our God not just in the places where the light shines but also in the shadowlands where we hide away that which we would rather not see. Yet in bringing it before the person of Jesus we discover it is He who can transform what seems impossible and dark within us. He calls out that we may not be lost, afraid or forsaken. The call of the Gospel is that he seeks to meet us in our daily lives and in the environment in which we live. He desires most deeply for us to come to him in our simplicity, our every day loving and hospitality. God desires to be at home with us without airs and graces. They call us to be more human, more Christian and more present with our whole lives. Our Christian Vocation is not just a job to be fulfilled but a journey to be walked.  It is this spirituality which is assisted by the saints I mentioned earlier. May St Francis, Our Guardian Angels and St Therese of Lisieux prayer for us.