16 August 2025 - Saturday of the 19th week, odd year
Joshua 24:14-29; Matthew 19:13-15
Homily
Throughout the Gospel, Jesus shows special attention to the most needy, the poorest, and the smallest. Usually, people bring Him the sick and the possessed so that He can heal them and deliver them from their demons. In today's Gospel, people simply bring Him little children who do not seem to need anything in particular.
They simply ask Him to lay His hands on them and pray. The disciples, who seem to want to protect Jesus from the intruders, want to send them away. Jesus, on the contrary, tells them to let them come to Him, for it is to those who are like them that the kingdom of heaven belongs.
You will remember that already in last Tuesday's Gospel, Jesus said that unless we become like little children, we will not enter the kingdom of heaven.
Let us note first of all that Jesus, in the Gospel, does not invite us to remain like little children, that is, to continue to behave in a childish and immature way throughout our lives. On the contrary, He invites us to become like little children — which is much more demanding. Remaining a child all one's life is easy — and, moreover, quite common. Becoming a child is much more difficult. For first you must become an adult and then, through a long process of purification and detachment, acquire once again the qualities of childhood. These qualities are simplicity, purity of heart, spontaneity, openness and truthfulness.
In this morning's Gospel, Jesus lays his hands on the little children who have been brought to him so that he may pray for them. What is the meaning of this laying on of hands in connection with prayer? It is a physical contact between two people: between the one who prays and the one for whom he prays. Just as in the healings performed by Jesus there is always a physical gesture accompanying the words, so it is here with prayer. This expresses the bond between the person praying and the person for whom he is praying. Through this physical contact, the grace obtained by the prayer of the one who prays is transmitted to the one for whom he prays. The unity that constitutes us all as ONE in Christ is in a sense physical as well as spiritual. We have all come from the hands of the same Potter, according to the image in Genesis; or, according to the image of the Psalmist, it is the same hands that have woven us all in our mothers' wombs. This is why, in all the sacraments, prayer or words are always accompanied by a physical gesture. When the priest gives absolution, for example, he extends his hand towards the penitent, a gesture by which he implores the grace of forgiveness to descend upon him or her.
Let us approach Jesus as little children and ask him to lay his hands on us as he did on the children in today's Gospel and to purify us of all our faults and wounds.
Armand Veilleux