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Mothers & Children
by Alfred O'Rahilly, Ph.D. 

ON one occasion some mothers brought their children to Our Lord so that He might lay His hands on them and bless them.  They must have been a noisy group: clamoring mothers with infants in arms, shrill-voiced little boys scampering about on the edge of Christ’s audience. Why, it was just as if nowadays children were chattering and crying during a sermon!

The disciples resented this intrusion on serious missionary work. So they scolded the children and tried to “shoo” them away. Had not the Apostles a good deal of right on their side? Probably, however, their action was not altogether due to anxiety to spare the Master from interruption and annoyance.

Their attitude showed some of the current indifference to, or contempt for, women and children, and a sense of self-importance.

Jesus Himself took a different view. Interrupting His teaching, He expressed great displeasure with His disciples. “Let the little children come to Me,” He said, “and do not keep preventing them. For to such belongs the Kingdom of God.”

So the children swarmed round Him; they had reverence and affection for Him, but no fear or distrust. Our Lord was seated, the youngsters standing. With His left arm round each boy in turn, He laid His right hand in blessing on the head of each.

There is hardly anything in the Gospels which so reveals Our Lord’s uniqueness as a religious teacher. One could not imagine Socrates acting thus. A curse of the pagan world was infanticide, the exposure of unwanted children; approved by Plato and Aristotle; combated by the early Christians; revived, slightly disguised, in our modern world. Even the Jewish religious leaders despised the uneducated and the immature. Christianity ushered in a new spirit of tenderness.

Our Lord’s declaration, “Let the little children come to Me,” was never so relevant and important as it is today, when there is such a widespread organized effort to “condition” youth away from and against Christ. Catholic education is the most vital issue for us in contemporary life. Parents can ponder the appeal of Jesus, and bring their children not only to be touched by Him but to receive Him into their souls.

Also that wonderful saying that God’s Kingdom belongs to the childlike contains a lesson very opposite to present-day mentality, in which, through specialisms and techniques, the capacity for the divine is so weakened. We must become little before God. “Unless you again become little children, you will not enter the Kingdom of God.”

How consoling is Our Lord’s attitude! He was displeased, not with the obstreperous mothers, not with the clamoring children, but with His own zealous Apostles. Had they succeeded in their action, not only would the mothers have been disappointed and discouraged, but the incident would have been misinterpreted later as if children were incapable of receiving sacramental grace. And He did not bless the little ones en masse; He welcomed each one individually. To Him each of us is unique; He calls His own sheep by name. No one, saint or Apostle, can stand between any one of us and Jesus.

The same lesson is conveyed in another incident. After accepting Jesus as Messiah, the Apostles, while on a journey, began an acrimonious dispute about priority of status in the messianic kingdom which they expected to be soon inaugurated. Our Lord knew what was happening behind His back. So, on arriving at their destination, He called a child, whom He stationed in front of the disciples. Placing His arms round the child, He addressed them: “Amen, I say to you, unless ye again become like little children, ye will not even enter the kingdom of heaven. For there the greatest is he who, like this little child, makes little of himself” (Matthew 18:3). This was Our Lord’s vivid answer to the ugly exhibition of ambition and jealousy. He completely rejected a militantly nationalist religion.

To conquer the world, He was recruiting, not leaders and soldiers, not even grown-ups, but men who had reverted to childlike faith and simplicity. The gates of the kingdom, resistant to the summons of the mighty, swing back at the touch of a child. Thus God confounds the learned and the strong (I Cor. 1:26).

Notice that it was the Apostles, His chief missioners, whom Our Lord told to become little children once more. “It is possible to remain little, even when in the most responsible offices and when living to a great age.”--St. Therese in Novissima Verba.

Condensed from Gospel Meditations by Alfred O’Rahilly, Phd., © 1958 , Helicon Press, Inc., Baltimore.