Gospel Reflection for Saturday, March 1, 2025

Let’s admit it once and for all, without fear: men and women, no matter how many years we grow, how much we study and experience, we remain weak, fragile, vulnerable beings, in need of affection and attention. If we’re realistic, what education and experience have often taught us is to build a shell that protects us from a world that seems threatening. It’s a shell that allows us to maintain the appearance of mature, serious, and responsible people. It’s a shell that also allows us, many times, to hide our feelings because the group, society, doesn’t think it’s right to show our feelings just like that. It’s a shell that gives us security to navigate the ups and downs and circumstances of this complicated and tricky world we’ve had to live in (the «complicated and tricky» part is taken from the song «Cambalache» by Enrique Santos Discépolo, which completes what was said).

But, if we’re brave and look at ourselves in the mirror without fear, what we find is what I said at the beginning: a weak, fragile, vulnerable being, in need of affection and attention. That’s the plain truth, however much we find it hard to accept and however much we’ve become so accustomed to the shell we’ve put on that we’ve ended up believing it’s part of our skin.

Perhaps what Jesus says when he invites us to become like children to enter the kingdom of God is nothing more than an invitation to remove that shell that covers us and to show ourselves as we are, naked of all artifice, and always needing a friendly hand to accompany us, to help us, to lift us up and walk with us.

From there, perhaps only from there, we can recognize and feel and experience the enormity of God’s love that created us and that maintains our life and our being. From there, and only from there, gratitude for so much free gift will become the engine of our life. From there, and only from there, we will be able to look at others in a different way, letting our eyes go beyond their shells.