{"id":1689,"date":"2009-09-22T17:46:00","date_gmt":"2009-09-22T17:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/standingonmyhead\/2009\/09\/st-matthew-sinners-and-little-children\/"},"modified":"2009-09-22T17:46:00","modified_gmt":"2009-09-22T17:46:00","slug":"st-matthew-sinners-and-little-children","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/standingonmyhead\/2009\/09\/st-matthew-sinners-and-little-children.html","title":{"rendered":"St Matthew, Sinners and Little Children"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a>I am certainly sorry not to have been blogging very much recently, but on Friday I travelled to Vandalia, Illinois to conduct a retreat on Healing the Family Tree (<\/i>more on that intriguing subject shortly when I have the time) with my friend John LaBriola. I first met John at EWTN when he and I were both there to film some shows at the same time. Then we met up again quite by chance to lead a retreat in Vandalia in July, and now again in September. John\u2019s written a book called Onward Catholic Soldiers <\/i> on spiritual warfare. <\/p>\n

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Then, I no sooner got back from Illinois on Sunday and had a short breather before I was up to bat leading the sixth grade retreat yesterday. This means I didn\u2019t get to post on St Matthew. What was nice about the feast of St Matthew yesterday was that I celebrated Mass with our beautiful sixth graders at St Joseph\u2019s Catholic School. The gospel is all about Christ calling sinners, and it seemed to me that Jesus Christ really only calls two categories of people: sinners and children. So as I read the gospel about Jesus calling sinners to the sixth graders I thought that he also calls children.<\/div>\n
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Really, that means no self righteous people and no grown ups are allowed in the kingdom, and when you think about it, isn\u2019t the essence of being \u2018grown up\u2019 being self righteous to a certain extent? What I cannot understand about adults\u2019 relationship with children is how often the adults become self righteous know it alls. How annoying and arrogant is that? Their being \u2018grown up\u2019 so often means they forget what it means to be a child. They put so many restraints on children and are so strict and so demanding. I feel sorry for our kids.<\/div>\n
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Of course, while we have to be children to enter the kingdom, we\u2019re not supposed to stay as children. We\u2019re expected to grow up to the full humanity of Jesus Christ as St Paul says in Ephesians, and this is what I love about St Matthew. He actually becomes as a little child to receive Jesus. He leaves all that grown up stuff about taxes and soldiers and politics and money and leaves it all behind and in a child like gesture of abandonment gets up to follow Christ.<\/div>\n
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Sometimes at school I\u2019m blamed for \u2018liking the bad kids\u2019. Maybe I do take the good kids for granted, and maybe my critics are right. I do like the kids who have troubles. There\u2019s something real about them, something needy. I see that they are sinners and children both and maybe therefore, (if they have open hearts) they\u2019re a step closer to the kingdom than all of us religious and righteous ones.<\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am certainly sorry not to have been blogging very much recently, but on Friday I travelled to Vandalia, Illinois to conduct a retreat on Healing the Family Tree (more on that intriguing subject shortly when I have the time) with my friend John LaBriola. I first met John at EWTN when he and I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":557,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nSt Matthew, Sinners and Little Children<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I am certainly sorry not to have been blogging very much recently, but on Friday I travelled to Vandalia, Illinois to conduct a retreat on Healing the\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/standingonmyhead\/2009\/09\/st-matthew-sinners-and-little-children.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"St Matthew, Sinners and Little Children\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I am certainly sorry not to have been blogging very much recently, but on Friday I travelled to Vandalia, Illinois to conduct a retreat on Healing the\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/standingonmyhead\/2009\/09\/st-matthew-sinners-and-little-children.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Fr. 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