Navarre Bible Commentary:Saturday, 7th Week in Ordinary Time

Jesus and the Children by Michael D. O'Brien

Mark 10:13-16

Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (RSVCE)

Jesus Blesses Little Children

13 And they were bringing children to him, that he might touch them; and the disciples rebuked them. 14 But when Jesus saw it he was indignant, and said to them, “Let the children come to me, do not hinder them; for to such belongs the kingdom of God. 15 Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.”16 And he took them in his arms and blessed them, laying his hands upon them.

Cited in the Catechism:  In promulgating the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Blessed John Paul II explained that the Catechism "is a statement of the Church's faith and of catholic doctrine, attested to or illumined by Sacred Scripture, the Apostolic Tradition and the Church's Magisterium."  He went on to "declare it to be a sure norm for teaching the faith and thus a valid and legitimate instrument for ecclesial communion" (Fidei Depositum). Passages from this Gospel reading are cited in the Catechism, paragraphs 699, 1244,  and 1261.

Commentary

Jesus and the children

10:13–16. This Gospel account has an attractive freshness and vividness about it which may be connected with St Peter, from whom St Mark would have taken the story. It is one of the few occasions when the Gospels tell us that Christ became angry. What provoked his anger was the disciples’ intolerance: they felt that these people bringing children to Jesus were a nuisance: it meant a waste of his time; Christ had more serious things to do than be involved with little children. The disciples were well-intentioned; it was just that they were applying the wrong criteria. What Jesus had told them quite recently had not registered: “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me; and whoever receives me, receives not me but him who sent me” (Mk 9:37).

Our Lord also stresses that a Christian has to become like a child to enter the Kingdom of heaven. “To be little you have to believe as children believe, to love as children love, to abandon yourself as children do …, to pray as children pray” (St Josemaría Escrivá, Holy Rosary, Prologue).

Our Lord’s words express simply and graphically the key doctrine of man’s divine sonship: God is our Father and we are his sons and daughters, his children; the whole of religion is summed up in the relationship of a son with his good Father. This awareness of God as Father involves a sense of dependence on our Father in heaven and trusting abandonment to his loving providence—in the way a child trusts its father or mother; the humility of recognizing that we can do nothing by ourselves; simplicity and sincerity, which make us straightforward and honest in our dealings with God and man.

Source: The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries. Biblical text from the Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries by members of the Faculty of Theology, University of Navarre, Spain.

Published by Four Courts Press, Kill Lane, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, Ireland, and by Scepter Publishers in the United States. We encourage readers to purchase The Navarre Bible for personal study. See Scepter Publishers for details.

"Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ." St Jerome