Saturday, August 17, 2019 19th Week in Ordinary Time 1st Reading: Jos 24:14-29 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 disregarded children. Consider for example how insensitive we are to them in the way we conduct business. We used to put “Go, Grow and Glow” on our billboards to exalt children development. But we have replaced them with the suggestive slogan “Just Do It” without due regard to children who may be affected by its subliminal message. If we really value them as Jesus did, the slightest possibility of harm to childhood innocence would be enough reason for us to reconsider certain actions.
The ill effects of our indifference have spilt over to our own children. We have allowed the internet to pursue them to the inner sanctum of our families. We have even allowed economic considerations to eject us from our homes, leaving our children unaccompanied in their process of growth. Even our homes are no longer child-friendly.
Are children better protected in the womb? Perhaps not! Many fun-loving women today believe that pregnancy will only spoil the fun. They insist that it is their right to decide who to allow into their wombs and when. Now that the threat has gone up to the womb, where else will children be safe?
Children are fruits of God’s magnanimous sharing to us his exclusive power to create human beings. But we seem to have grown tired of exercising this privilege of procreation. We just want the fun minus the responsibility of begetting. How unfair that after making it to this world on the day we were born, we should bar new entrants of our own kind through contraceptive use. Other countries are now striking their breasts for having done what we insist doing with our population. In Japan, people are retiring late for lack of substitutes. Governments of other countries are dangling incentives so people would bear more children. But there are very 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., D.M.
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