NOTES for Mat 18:1-14

The evangelist connects the words about the children we must become in order to enter the Kingdom of Heaven with a short parable about a shepherd and a lost sheep, and this immediately puts everything in its proper place. It is not only a matter of becoming weak, defenseless, and dependent. (Perhaps at times it is necessary to feel like children before God.) But Christ also clearly speaks here of a “new childhood,” that is, of a second birth: not only of feeling like children in comparison with God, but of truly becoming children of the heavenly Father (and here any childish immaturity is out of place, for this calling is too exalted). Understood this way, the familiar commandment “become like children” turns into an unfathomable call to share in God’s life, to become beloved sons and daughters in the beloved Only-Begotten Son. In Christ’s Resurrection, this path opens before us...