“Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me” (Mt 18:5)

[Jesus said], “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me” (Mt 18:5). [We are invited] to reflect on the condition of children. Today Jesus continues to call them to himself and to set them as an example to all those who wish to be his disciples. Jesus’ words call upon us to see how children are treated in our families, in civil society, and in the Church. They are also an incentive to rediscover the simplicity and trust which believers must cultivate in imitation of the Son of God, who shared the lot of the little ones and the poor. Saint Clare of Assisi loved to say that Christ, “lay in a manger, lived in poverty on the earth and died naked on the Cross.” (Testament, Franciscan Sources, No. 2841).

Jesus had a particular love for children because of “their simplicity, their joy of life, their spontaneity, and their faith filled with wonder” (Angelus Message, 18 December 1994). For this reason he wishes the community to open its arms and its heart to them, even as he did: “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me” (Mt 18:5). Alongside children Jesus sets the “very least of the brethren:” the suffering, the needy, the hungry and thirsty, strangers, the naked, the sick, and the imprisoned. In welcoming them and loving them, or in treating them with indifference and contempt, we show our attitude towards him, for it is in them that he is particularly present.

In the years of his public life Jesus often insisted that only those who become like children will enter the Kingdom of Heaven (cf. Mt 18:3; Mk 10:15; Lk 18:17; Jn 3:3). In his teaching, young children become a striking image of the disciple who is called to follow the divine Master with childlike docility: “Whoever humbles himself like this child, he is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven” (Mt 18:4).

“To become” one of the least and “to receive” the little ones: these are two aspects of a single teaching which the Lord repeats to his disciples in our time. Only the one who makes himself one of the “least” is able to receive with love the “least” of our brothers and sisters.



John Paul II, Message for Lent 2004