GOSPEL REFLECTION, WEDNESDAY, 15TH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME, 16 JULY 2025

Matthew 11:25-27.  In Matthew’s gospel we hear Jesus praying to the Father in only a couple of times – here and on the cross.  We are immensely privileged to hear his words.  When he addresses the Father, I suspect that Jesus most likely uses the Aramaic title ‘Abba,’ Father, although what we read in this particular case is the ordinary Greek word ‘Father.’  The intimacy of the prayer between Father and Son imply that ‘Abba’ may have been the word.  Speaking to his Father Jesus appears to condemn intellectual power from being unable to grasp the gospel, but likely it is not the power he condemns but intellectual pride.  As someone said many years ago, “the heart, not the head, is the home of the gospel.”  However, it is not stupidity that has the ability to hear the gospel, but humility.  The ability to grasp the gospel lies in the very core of who we are, what scripture calls the ‘heart,’ the very depth of our inner spirituality and capacity to trust, not just as individuals but as the gathered Church under the influence the Holy Spirit.   The Holy Spirit is the intimate bond between the Father and Son.  It is no use turning away from such heady language, because nothing else is adequate to say what must be said. 

This brief passage of scripture, Jesus’ prayer to the Father, concludes with arguably the greatest claim that Jesus ever made that can be grasped in its fulness only with the heart and  not the head, so to speak.  It is central to our Christian faith, the faith of the Church, that only Jesus alone can reveal God to us.  Jesus is at the heart of revelation of the divine which is central to his mission among us.  It is in Jesus Christ alone that we see what God is like, and that Jesus alone can give that spiritual insight, that knowledge, to any one of us who is humble and trustful enough to receive it in the very depth of our being.