A Reflection upon Ecclesiasticus 31:8–11 and St. Matthew 18:1–5
In Festo S. Joannis Baptistæ de la Salle Confessoris ~ III. classis
Feria VI post Ascensionem
The Church, in her wisdom, sets before us this day two passages of Sacred Scripture which, at first hearing, seem to dwell upon different summits. The first, drawn from the Book of Ecclesiasticus, sings of the man tried in the fire of riches and found unblemished: Beatus vir qui inventus est sine macula. The second, from the Gospel according to St. Matthew, sets before us a little child, placed by Our Lord in the midst of His disciples as the very pattern of greatness in the Kingdom. Yet these two passages meet in one place: in the heart of the saint whose feast we keep today, John Baptist de la Salle, priest and confessor, father and teacher of the poor.
The Blessed Man Without Blemish
The Holy Ghost, speaking through the lips of the son of Sirach, gives us this benediction:
Beatus vir qui inventus est sine macula: et qui post aurum non abiit, nec speravit in pecunia et thesauris. Quis est hic, et laudabimus eum? fecit enim mirabilia in vita sua.
“Blessed is the man that is found without blemish: and that hath not gone after gold, nor put his trust in money nor in treasures. Who is he, and we will praise him? for he hath done wonderful things in his life” (Eccli. 31:8–9, Douay-Rheims).
The Church reads this passage over the tombs of her confessors not by accident, but because she knows that holiness is forged in renunciation. Gold tries the heart of man as fire tries the gold itself; few there are who pass through that furnace unscathed. He that could have transgressed, and hath not transgressed: and could do evil things, and hath not done them — this is the praise of one who has held the world in his hand and let it fall, that he might lay hold upon Christ.
St. Augustine, commenting upon the perils of riches, observes that wealth is not condemned of itself, but the cleaving of the heart to it: “Non amando habeas, sed habendo non ameris” — “Possess wealth without loving it; let not the possession be a possessing of thee” (cf. Enarrationes in Psalmos, on Ps. 51). And St. Cyprian, in his treatise De Opere et Eleemosynis, teaches that the rich man who gives to the poor purchases Christ Himself, exchanging perishable goods for an inheritance which cannot fade away.
This was the doctrine which the holy founder of the Brothers of the Christian Schools made his own. Born of nobility in Rheims, heir to a name and a fortune, Canon de la Salle gave his patrimony to the poor during the famine of 1684, that he might be free to gather around himself a humble company of schoolmasters to teach the children of artisans and the indigent. He did not merely give alms; he gave himself. He came down from the canon’s stall to the chalkboard, from the company of gentlemen to the company of children. Of him it may truly be said: Fecit enim mirabilia in vita sua — “he hath done wonderful things in his life.”
The Little Child in the Midst
The Evangelist tells us that the disciples came to Jesus with a question very near to the heart of fallen man: Quis, putas, major est in regno cælorum? — “Who, thinkest thou, is the greater in the kingdom of heaven?” (Matt. 18:1). It is the old question of Cain, the old question of Babel, the question which men have asked in every age. And Our Lord answers, not with a discourse, but with a sign:
Et advocans Jesus parvulum, statuit eum in medio eorum, et dixit: Amen dico vobis, nisi conversi fueritis, et efficiamini sicut parvuli, non intrabitis in regnum cælorum.
“And Jesus calling unto him a little child, set him in the midst of them, and said: Amen I say to you, unless you be converted, and become as little children, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 18:2–3).
St. John Chrysostom, in his fifty-eighth homily on St. Matthew, marvels at the gentleness of this rebuke. The disciples are sick with ambition, and the Physician applies not the cautery but the balm. “He shows them by deeds that He requires of them much self-restraint, and great humility.” The child knows nothing of precedence, nothing of vainglory; he is what he is, simply, openly, and without disguise. “Whatsoever,” says the holy Doctor, “is free from passion, free from pride, free from the desire of glory — that is the nature of a little child.”
St. Jerome, treating the same passage, distinguishes carefully: Our Lord does not command the disciples to be children in understanding, for elsewhere the Apostle says, “In sensibus parvuli estote, sed malitia parvuli” — “In sense be not children, but in malice be children” (1 Cor. 14:20). Rather, He calls them to that innocence and that simplicity which the child possesses by nature and which the saint must recover by grace.
And St. Hilary of Poitiers, with his accustomed depth, sees in the little child a figure of those who, having renounced the world, are reborn through the laver of regeneration into a new infancy in Christ. The greatness of the Kingdom is measured inversely to the pride of the world.
Then comes the word which crowns all: Et qui susceperit unum parvulum talem in nomine meo, me suscipit — “And he that shall receive one such little child in my name, receiveth me” (Matt. 18:5). Behold the mystery: in receiving the child, we receive Christ; in teaching the child, we teach Christ; in clothing, feeding, and lifting up the child, we do these things unto Christ Himself. St. Gregory the Great, in his Moralia, reminds us that the works of mercy done to the least are inscribed in heaven against the name of the Lord Jesus, who has deigned to identify Himself with the little ones.
The Saint in Whom Both Meet
Here, then, the two passages are wedded in the life of St. John Baptist de la Salle. The Beatus vir of Ecclesiasticus is the man who emptied his hands of gold; the parvulus of the Gospel is the little one whom he gathered into the school. The confessor became great because he made himself small; he received Christ because he received the children.
There is a profound providence in this. The world had long honored the priest who preached to kings, the doctor who debated in the schools, the missionary who carried the Faith to distant lands. But in St. John Baptist de la Salle, the Church beheld a new pattern of priestly heroism: the man who would spend himself, hour by hour and year by year, in the patient instruction of the poor. He understood that the catechesis of a child is no lesser work than the conversion of a kingdom; for every soul is a kingdom, and the child of today is the man of tomorrow.
Pope Leo XIII, when he raised this humble servant to the altars in the Jubilee year of 1900, set him before the Church as a model for those troubled times; and Pope Pius XII, in 1950, declared him heavenly patron of all who teach the young. The Church has thus enthroned, in the person of de la Salle, that union of holy renunciation and holy childlikeness which the liturgy proclaims this day.
A Word for the Soul
Beloved reader, the lesson is not for schoolmasters alone. Each of us has been entrusted with little ones — be they children of our blood, souls in our care, or simply the weak and forgotten whom Providence places upon our path. And each of us is summoned to that twofold purity which the Epistle and the Gospel proclaim: to be unblemished by the love of mammon, and to be childlike in the simplicity of our walk before God.
Examine, then, your heart this day:
- Have I trusted in money, or in the Living God?
- Have I sought to be great in the eyes of men, or little in the eyes of Heaven?
- Have I received the little ones in the name of Christ, or have I despised them, perhaps in my impatience or my distraction?
A Suggested Devotion
Let the faithful soul, in honor of this holy confessor, recite slowly the Magnificat of Our Lady, in which is sung the great reversal of the proud and the lifting up of the humble: Deposuit potentes de sede, et exaltavit humiles. Add to this a single decade of the Most Holy Rosary in honor of the Holy Childhood of Our Lord, that we may be conformed to Him who, being God, became a little Child for our sake.
Oration
Deus, qui ad christianam pauperum eruditionem, et ad juventutem in via veritatis firmandam, sanctum Joannem Baptistam Confessorem suscitasti, et novam per eum in Ecclesia familiam collegisti: concede propitius; ut, ejus intercessione et exemplo, studio gloriae tuae in animarum salute ferventes, ejus in cælis coronae participes fieri valeamus. Per Dominum nostrum Jesum Christum. Amen.
O God, who didst raise up Saint John Baptist, Confessor, to provide a Christian education for the poor and to confirm the young in the way of truth, and who through him didst gather together a new family in the Church: mercifully grant, by his intercession and example, that we, being zealous for Thy glory in the salvation of souls, may be made partakers of his crown in heaven. Through our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Should you wish to descend more deeply into these mysteries, the Lives of the Saints path may carry you next to the school-room of Rheims and the cell of the founder; or the Theology and Doctrine path will lead you through the patristic doctrine of evangelical poverty and spiritual childhood, in the company of Sts. Chrysostom, Jerome, and Augustine.
Sancte Joannes Baptista de la Salle, ora pro nobis.