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Love God with childlike trust
Yes to loving God and others. Yes to childlike trust.
All of creation is God’s gift of love to us. Today’s reading from Genesis where God creates Eve as a partner for Adam leads to the Gospel and the subject of marriage.
The second reading from Hebrews will continue the next few Sundays until the Feast of Christ the King. It centers on Jesus as the Son of God, Savior and Eternal High Priest. Jesus was sent by God the Father to die for us, to rise from the dead and to enter gloriously into heaven where he intercedes for us and waits for us.
In this Sunday’s Gospel, Jesus teaches about the sacredness of marriage and the call to married men and women to focus on unconditional, self-giving, forgiving and generous love for each other and their children.
As Jesus finishes preaching, mothers bring their children to him for blessing.
Jesus is glad to see the children because they are important to him.
But the disciples don’t want the mothers and children bothering Jesus. He scolds the disciples, “Let the children come to me,” he said, “Don’t stop them.” He says to the disciples, “People who want to be in God’s kingdom must love me, trust me, and listen to me like these children do.”
Bridging the culture gap. Carl Anderson, Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus, in his book, “A Civilization of Love,” states it is the responsibility of Christians to show the world persons created and redeemed by Christ.
“They will do so by their actions, by their attitudes and by their influence. But above all, they will do so by their love. This love is a matter not of mere high-minded sentimentality but of genuine compassion tempered with a well-grounded realism. It is a love that offers hope not only for eternity but for a better way of life on this earth. It is a love that offers the promise of healing both the spiritual and material ills of humanity. It is the love of which Christ spoke when, after his Resurrection, he asked Peter if he loved him. Peter replied, ‘Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.’ And to this Christ replied, ‘Feed my sheep.’”
