Saturday, August 13, 2016 19th Week in Ordinary Time 1st Reading: Ez 18: 1-10. 13b. 30-32 Gospel: Matthew 19:13-15
Little children were brought to Jesus that he might lay his hands on them with a prayer. But the disciples scolded those who brought them. Jesus then said, “Let them be! Do not stop the children from coming to me, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to people such as these.” So Jesus laid his hands on them and went his way.
D@iGITAL-EXPERIENCE
(Daily Gospel in the
Assimilated Life
Experience)
While the disciples considered children a nuisance Jesus looked highly at them as heirs of the kingdom. We do not differ much from the way the disciples treated children. We used to put “Go, Grow and Glow” on our billboards but we have replaced them with suggestive slogans like “Just Do It”. If we value children as Jesus did, the slightest possibility of harm to childhood innocence would be a major consideration in our transactions.
How is your home protecting your children? Unbridled use of internet by children plus absentee parents is the perfect formula of destruction of children at home. With the internet in and parents out, is the home still the safe haven for children? They are not even safe in the mother’s womb! Many fun-loving women today believe that pregnancy will only spoil the fun. They never bridle the bit when it comes to indulgence in carnal pleasure. They insist that it is their right to decide who to allow into their wombs and when. The threat has gone from home up to the womb. Where else can they take shelter and be safe?
If children are least important to us, they are very important to God. He had even made them heirs of the kingdom. Children are reminders of our exclusive privilege to share in God’s power to create humans. It seems we are tired of exercising this privilege. Come to think of this: Isn’t it unfair that after making it to this world we bar new entrants of our own kind through contraceptive use? Population engineering may not be evil per se, but it becomes immoral if we do it without any sense of intergenerational stewardship.
Other countries are now striking their breasts for having done what we insist doing. In Japan, people are retiring late from their jobs for lack of substitutes. Governments of other countries are dangling incentives so people would bear more children. But there are only few takers. Contraception is a mentality no incentive can alter overnight. Social paradigm takes centuries to shift.
Today’s Gospel invites us to do two things: Love children by giving them a chance to be born, and give them the right environment to GO, GROW and GLOW in the Lord. – (Atty.) Rev. Fr. Dan Domingo P. delos Angeles, Jr., DM, MMExM, MAPM, REB. Email:dan.delosangeles@gmail.com.
May comment ka ba sa column ni Father Dan? May tanong ka ba sa kanya?
I-type ang BANDERA
REACT <message/ name/age/address> at i-send sa 4467.