Peace be with you.
Friends, the gospel for this weekend is marvelous,
from the 11th chapter of Matthew,
and it contains the passage that Père Lagrange,
one of the great Catholic biblical scholars
of the last century, referred to, as quote,
"Matthew's most precious pearl."
It's also been described, this passage,
as a Johannine bolt from the Mathian blue.
Now what am I talking about?
Well, the language Jesus uses here is much more
redolent of John's gospel than Matthew.
It sounds like the way Jesus talks in John.
So, it's a Johannine bolt out of the Matthew,
the Mathian blue.
Now, what are we talking about?
What's so extraordinary here?
Let me read it to you.
At that time, Jesus exclaimed,
"I give praise to you, Father,
Lord of heaven and earth,
for although you've hidden these things
from the wise and the learned,
you've revealed them to your little ones.
Yes, Father, such has been your gracious will."
Now listen as he goes on,
"No one knows the Son except the Father,
and no one knows the Father except the Son,
and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal him."
Can you hear it there, that Johannine quality?
It sounds like the way Jesus talks in John's gospel.
Why is it Matthew's most precious pearl?
Because we're being invited here
into the inner life of God.
So, this is not simply a great saint or a great sage
or wise figure talking about God,
because reference is being made to the Father and the Son.
It's the Son inviting us into, listen now,
the dynamics of his relationship to the Father.
We're not just talking about God the way
any religious person or religious philosopher might,
we're being invited into the very inner life of God,
the relationship between the Father and the Son.
So, we're on very holy ground.
See, that's what Père Lagrange meant,
we're on very holy ground here.
So, now let's look at it step by step.
"I give you praise Father, Lord of heaven and earth,
for although you've hidden these things from the wise
and the learned, you revealed them to little ones."
The Greek there is tauta, these things.
Well, what things is He talking about here?
The things that have to do with the relationship
between the Father and the Son.
So, again, this is not just a religious philosopher,
Aristotle or Kant, or a religious guru or teacher,
this is the Son speaking out of the
experience of the inner life of God
and the things that have been revealed
to the little ones
are these dynamics that obtain
between the Father and the Son.
Okay, that's kind of high abstract language.
What am I talking about?
From all eternity, from before time,
the Father gives himself, the Father empties himself
giving rise to the Son.
The Son, in turn, having received this
gift from the Father, gives it back.
The Father and the Son let go of each other
in an act of mutual love.
That love, that mutual giving,
is precisely what we call, the Holy Spirit.
These things, these dynamics that obtain
within the inner life of God,
have to do with a great act of letting go,
of giving, receiving and then giving back.
Why have they been revealed to little ones?
Mind you, please, everybody, this is not some polemic
against theology or against the intellectual life.
When Jesus says,
"you've hidden them from the wise and learned,
but reveal them to little ones,"
don't read that as,
"Well, who needs to read Augustine and St. Paul
and Chrysostom and Jerome and Anselm and Thomas Aquinas
and John Henry Newman?"
No, no, the church has reverenced those people
from the beginning.
Anti-intellectualism, as I've often said,
has been a curse.
And whenever it raises its ugly head up and down the centuries,
the church is in decline.
So, please don't misunderstand this as,
"Well, who needs all this highfalutin theology?"
See, what is the Lord driving in here?
It's very similar to those passages where he says
the Kingdom of God belongs to the childlike.
Unless you change and become like a little child,
you cannot enter the Kingdom of God.
Well, does he mean we should all become infantilized?
No, no.
See, what are the dynamics of the Kingdom of God?
The dynamic of love, of letting be,
of accepting gifts, of non-self-consciousness.
Well, that's what a child is capable of
before we and the wider society,
kind of beat that out of them.
Children are capable of that kind of relationship,
of gratuity and of openness, non-self-consciousness.
So, in a similar way, who are the learned and
the clever here from whom these mysteries are hidden?
They're those who are clinging to their knowledge
in a sort of self-important way,
who are puffed up by their knowledge.
The little ones...
the little ones who get the Trinity,
to whom the Trinity is revealed,
are those who can enter, readily,
into this dynamic of giving, receiving and giving back.
This beautiful dynamic of openness to love.
See, and that's being revealed about the
very being of God. It's marvelous.
Now again, listen,
"All things have been handed over to me by my Father."
Well, see, that's it.
That's the Trinitarian dynamic.
The Father doesn't hang on to his godliness...
Lets it go, gives it away.
"Everything I have is yours."
Think of the Father of the prodigal Son saying that.
Well, that's an imitation, see, of the Trinity.
"Everything I have is yours."
The Father gives himself away.
The Son receives the gift
and then gives it back to the Father.
And that beautiful rhythm and dynamic of grace,
that's called the Holy Spirit.
"All things have been handed over to me by my Father."
This is the truth and everybody,
it's the ground of our being.
This is the creator of all things.
The deepest truth about existence
is being disclosed here.
It's the dynamic of love.
Listen as he goes on,
"No one knows the Son except the Father,
and no one knows the Father except the Son,
and anyone to whom his Son wishes to reveal him."
Please don't read this as a kind of Christian imperialism.
Well, I mean, only we know about God
because we know Jesus.
Well, no, I mean, all kinds of people,
different religions and philosophies and so on
can know something about God.
I'm not denying that for a minute.
Vatican II says there are rays of light,
elements of truth in all the great philosophies
and religions.
So, I'm not saying this is unique to
Christians to understand God,
but what is unique to us Christians?
And there's no way around it.
Listen again,
"No one knows the Son except the Father,
and no one knows the Father except the Son."
Well, that's true, because we wouldn't know
about these Trinitarian dynamics
in the inner life of God
unless someone had come
from that inner life to reveal it to us.
The Father is known as Father
only in relation to the Son, right?
That's the only way his Father is in relation to the Son.
The Son is known as Son only in relation to the Father,
the one that sent him.
So, this is true.
The only ones who have the privilege of truly knowing
what's going on inside the life of God
are those to whom the Son has revealed it.
See why this is a precious pearl?
You see why we're on especially holy ground
with this passage?
We're the ones who know the meaning of it all.
The deepest truth of things, watch now, is not
clinging and making it my own and holding onto it,
that's the wisdom of the world.
And if you see it...
Just open your eyes every day,
you'll see it.
Listen to anyone talk, watch any movie,
listen to any song, open yourself
to the culture, what you're going to find is,
"Hey, the deepest truth of things is,
you better hang on to what you can get
out of this life."
We know that's not the case.
The deepest truth of things is this dynamic of love,
of letting go, of receiving and giving back.
That's characteristic of the inner life of God.
That's the high privilege, everybody,
the high privilege of the Christian life,
that we've been given access to this truth.
Okay, now, I'm going to close with this,
but listen now to the behavioral implications
because the Lord spells it out next.
"Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened
and I will give you rest."
See, what burdens us?
What's the burden of life?
It's this old lie that we will become happy
if we just get enough of the goods of the world.
If we can just draw enough into ourselves
and hang onto it,
then I'll be happy.
I will not be happy.
On the contrary.
What do we all want?
Well, this lovely word here, rest.
It doesn't mean like lying in a hammock.
It means fulfillment.
It means peace.
It means the joy that we all want.
How do you get it?
You get it by imitating the rhythms and dynamics
of the divine life,
by entering into this love
between the Father and the Son
that's been revealed to us in Christ.
"So, come to me," the Lord says,
"all you who are burdened by this lie you've been told,
and in me you'll find rest."
And then this famous line, we need to reflect upon it,
"Take my yoke upon you and learn from me
for I am meek and humble of heart."
See, what's a yoke?
Well, you don't put a yoke on a single animal.
A yoke is put on a pair of animals
and then they're going to pull the wagon
or the cart or the plow or something, right?
So, to be yoked is to be joined with another.
So, how beautiful here are Christians,
the Lord who's just revealed to us this dynamic
of the inner life of God, now says,
"Come on, get yoked together with me.
Let's, the two of us, walk together."
Now, under this sweet and light yoke,
because what's being revealed here
is liberation, it's life.
So, fine, now get tied, get yoked to Jesus
and you'll make your way joyfully through life.
See, again, everybody, don't think of the Lord
as this just demanding figure up there,
out there, someplace wagging his finger at us.
No, no, He's the one that invites us,
"Come on, come on. Put my yoke on you
so that together we can walk in this new life."
"You'll find rest for yourselves,
for my yoke is easy and my burden is light."
Yes, yes.
This is not something onerous.
What's onerous is the lie the world tells us,
that's what's onerous.
That's the terrible burden.
The Lord says,
"No, join yourself to me, and together we're going
to walk according to the dynamics of the divine life."
Just a last thought here,
as we are yoked to Jesus,
he's yoked to the Father, you see?
The Son is revealed to us about the Father.
The Father has spoken to us through his Son.
The Father and Son are yoked together.
The yolk, by the way, is called the Holy Spirit.
As the Father and Son are yoked together,
so now we, and the Lord Jesus,
are joined together,
to live a life not of hanging onto and clinging,
but of letting go in love.
Can you see why this little passage,
Matthew chapter 11, is indeed
Matthew's most precious pearl?
We're on holy ground, everybody, with this passage,
and God bless you.