Ostium Catholic

Ezekiel's criterion for who receives the mark of protection is not ritual observance or doctrinal correctness. It is grief. Those who moan and groan over the abominations - who have retained the capacity to be disturbed by what is wrong - are the ones spared when the glory departs. The ones who have made peace with the abominations, who have grown accustomed, who no longer feel the wrongness, receive no mark.

The glory of the LORD then rises from the temple. The presence is not anchored to the building or to the institution as such. It goes where the grieving faithful are.

Jesus's answer to the greatness debate is a child with no status. In the ancient world, children were not idealized. They had no legal standing, no social position, nothing to offer in the economy of prestige. Jesus calls the one with the least to offer and says: become like this. The model of kingdom greatness is the person the disciples would have moved out of the way to continue their argument.

The little ones have angels looking upon the Father's face. That is a statement about dignity that runs deeper than social standing. The person being overlooked in your environment right now has direct heavenly representation. To despise them is to despise someone the Father is attending to.

Clare of Assisi gave up everything her society counted as greatness and spent forty years in voluntary smallness. She had to fight to keep the poverty - it was not the path of least resistance even within the Church. She died at peace in it.

The early adult years are often organized around a version of the disciples' question: who is greatest? The status structures of work and social life encode rankings and the competition for position is real. Jesus's answer is the same now as then. The person you are ignoring in the conversation about greatness is the model.

Who is the little one in your environment right now that you have been overlooking because you are focused on the conversation about greatness? Name them. Then receive them in his name - which means treat them as someone whose angels are before the Father's face.

Lord, do not let me become numb. Let me grieve what is wrong and receive the little ones and go after the strayed one. Not the will of the Father that one be lost. I want to be in that will. Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us. Amen.