Daily Reflection Memorial of the Guardian Angels

Today’s gospel passage is chosen for the memorial of the guardian angels but it’s teaching of the Lord’s is quite profound. What is greatness in the human being? We speak of it all the time; great leaders, great artists, great actors, great athletes, great minds. What’s most intriguing about great people is that virtually every single one of them also had great flaws. Within their greatness also seemed to exist, side by side as it were, great weakness. Shakespeare famously said, in his play Twelfth Night, “Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them.” Eleanor Roosevelt, somewhat cynically said, “Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.” And Plato said, “The first and greatest victory is to conquer yourself.”

I believe one of the principle characteristics of great minds is that they are almost always opposed, at least initially, because great minds almost always think in radically different ways that challenge everything conventional and ordinary. Jesus himself is a prime example of this. Here Jesus tells us something about greatness that does not seem at all obvious. That is because the Kingdom Jesus is always speaking of (and always only in parables) is something altogether different than what we know or think we know. For in the Kingdom of God, greatness is characterized by smallness, like that of little children. “Unless you become like little children, you cannot enter the Kingdom of heaven.”

The operative word here is “like,” for there are many who act childishly, which is something altogether different. There is nothing good in that. So, it behooves us to ask, what is it to be like a child? Little children, and it doesn’t last long so they must be very little, are innocent and guileless. They can only be who they are. They cannot help but be honest and true. They have not yet learned subterfuge. They are entirely dependent on others. They have and exert no power. They innately trust completely and without reservation. They are usually filled with joy unless someone takes that away from them. Little children love freely and fully. Oh, I know any mother of a two-year-old will tell you that there’s another side to them, but that is never dominant unless something else is wrong. Meekness and humbleness are just their natures.

I believe the one way to really “turn and become like little children” is to embrace your powerlessness, for I believe that that is God’s greatest gift to humanity. But to do that, we must become aware that we are, actually, powerless. Most of us continually attempt to exert all kinds of various imagined powers, trying to control others, situations, our own selves. We do it in all sorts of ways, often entirely unaware. Not only is it futile but it causes almost all the misery in the world. Whenever you “will to power” in any way, you are deep within the illusion of pride and self and entirely outside of any meekness or humility (humility is actually another word for truth). Entirely outside of God's will.

The simplest way to embrace your powerlessness is to begin to seek to simply accept everything. Everything that happens and everyone as they are. Resist judging in any way, that something or someone is good or bad, attractive or unattractive, desired or undesired. Say nothing about it, just let it be. If you must say something, say “I do not know why this is happening. I do not understand this (or this person). But I believe that somehow, this is a gift to me from God.” You cannot truly love anyone (including yourself) unless you come to accept them as they are, not as you wish they were or hoped they’d be. That is how God loves you, not some ideal you, not some holy saint who made themselves pure, but you as you are right now. God cannot love you any more than how God loves you right now. We need to stop thinking that God can ever be disappointed or frustrated or angry or annoyed with us. Those are human things. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could love one another like God loves us, not for what they give us, but just because they are? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could love ourselves and everyone and all the world just as it is, forgiving everything and embracing everything? That is how God loves us and the whole world (Jn 3:16). It would change everything overnight. God has enabled us all to love that way, if we would only believe it.