Intellectual Pride Cuts Us Off from Jesus

Hidden inside this weekends beautiful Gospel passage is a basic truth and a serious warning. The truth: Gods word, the Good News is so simple it can be understood by everyone. The warning: it is so simple that the overly intelligent might overlook it as foolishness. 

IJesus is speaking to a group of his followers returning from their first missionary journey, which had been wildly successful. They are full of joy in the victory they have achieved in Jesus’ name. With his grace they had finally been able to do something worthwhile, meaningful, and wonderful. These disciples believed in Jesus, trusted him, and followed his teaching. Now they are reaping the benefits, experiencing the kind of interior peace and satisfaction that comes only to the humble, to the "childlike," the ones willing take Jesus at his word.

Those who are "wise and learned," on the other hand, arrogantly demand that God explain himself completely before they agree to trust in him. This is a reasonable expectation to have from a politician, but it is a diabolical attitude to take in relation to God. The "wise and learned" are the Pharisees and Sadducees, the successful people, and the intellectuals, the ones who will eventually nail Jesus to a cross instead of "taking his yoke upon them." They can not imagine that, maybe, just maybe, God knows a little bit more than they do, so they should accept his teaching with faith, the way children trust in their parents. As a result, they cut themselves off from the joy, interior peace, and deep satisfaction only Jesus can bring.

By refusing to take up Jesus’ yoke, they refused to let him give them rest. They are committing a sin we do not hear much about these days, maybe because it is so widespread: the sin of intellectual pride. Intellectual pride is diabolical because it tries to put the creature into the place of the Creator. After all, we were the ones created to reverence and obey God, not the other way around.

Saint Therese of Lisieux was a cloistered Carmelite nun who died at the tender young age of twenty-four, yet she is a great spiritual master and a Doctor of the Church. She expounded on what she called the “little way of childhood.” She based her little way on the fact that we are God's children in Christ, and we ought to love our Father in heaven with a filial love full of confidence and abandonment.

She saw this as the best way to live Jesus’ teaching that God was our Father: to realize God’s fatherhood toward us and to develop an absolute confidence in God as Our Father. She was convinced that whether we were sinner or a saint, old or young, Our Father was Our Father who always treats us with love and mercy, so we should always try to be as children to him. Perhaps this is a good exercise for all of us. Simply try being a little “childish” this week in Saint Therese’s sense of the word.

God Bless,
Deacon John

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