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Commentary on the Gospel for September 30, 2024
Today, the Church remembers Saint Jerome, patron saint of translators and, in the opinion of many, the first specialist in biblical exegesis. The collect prayer for the day says: “O God, who granted the presbyter Saint Jerome a gentle and lively love for Sacred Scripture, make your people feed on your word with greater abundance and find in it the source of life.”
Saint Jerome, in the history of the Church but also in universal history, is a very important figure from the 4th and 5th centuries to our days. It is surprising and even humorous that in today’s Gospel, Jesus, responding to the disciples’ question about who is the most important, declares: “Whoever welcomes this child in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. For the least among you is the most important.” And that’s it. As we are certain that God sees into the depths of our hearts, we suppose that Jerome attained the simplicity of a little one before the Lord. Also, that we, if we recognize our essential smallness and helplessness, will be welcomed by His mercy.
We can examine our lives and sincerely answer the question: Who is important to me, really? I suspect that, except for many cases in the family sphere where the primacy is held by the child, the sick, or the elderly, the “important” ones are those who please us the most or can benefit us the most: those who have power or authority, the rich, the famous, the most attractive, the most brilliant… Those who provide us with emotional or economic well-being and power.
Jesus is definitely a subversive: he asks us to change our criteria of value with our neighbor and put the little ones first, because whoever welcomes them welcomes Him. To put more love in them, in deeds and words, to care for them, to listen to them. Also to respect them because even with the good intention of helping, we might use the “condescension” of those who believe themselves superior. All of this is often hardly gratifying to our fallen human condition. Like the first disciples, we can only do it by following the Lord and embracing his cross. Let us feed on his word with greater abundance and find in it the source of life.