Justin Appel

Dear Friends,

Today’s Gospel lesson (Matthew 18:1-9) is challenging, to say the least. Jesus teaches the disciples that they need to become like little children in order to become the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

What qualities characterize a child? Hopefully, if he has been raised in a loving home, a child should possess an internal sense of humility, lowliness, and a practiced familiarity with obedience to his parents. A child initially remains mercifully free from conceit, pretense, and what John calls “the boastful pride of life”—though they learn such qualities quickly by imitating the values the world inculcates.

My friends, it is boggling to the mind to consider that humility remains a cardinal virtue in the Christian faith. Need I state the obvious fact that our secular culture, to which we all subscribe in one way or another, teaches the centrality of pride and its associated vices? It teaches us to find our value in accomplishments, in social status, in wealth, in tokens of prestige, in achieving educational accolades, and so on.

What Jesus holds up as our example could not contrast more with these surrounding values: childlike humility, being “poor in spirit,” meekness, obedience to the point of death, and so on.

The only conclusion I can come to by reading these passages is that the way of Christ is essentially countercultural to the world’s way. At a very basic level, if we are going to learn to be followers of Christ, we will need to take our cues from the Church’s own culture, and from the Saints, who show us what a Christian praxis might look like with regards to humility and the need for a childlike disposition.

Yours in Christ,

—Justin