Wednesday in the Fifteenth Week of Ordinary Time, July 13, 2022

Matthew 11, 25-27

At that time Jesus exclaimed: “I give praise to you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for although you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned you have revealed them to the childlike. Yes, Father, such has been your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal him.”

The verses that make up today’s Gospel Reading have baffled scholars because they read more like verses from the Gospel of St. John than from that of St. Matthew.  The vocabulary, the style, and even the subject matter strike scholars as belonging to a declaration of Jesus that John might have quoted.  It is true that the ways Matthew and John report Jesus as speaking are very distinct.  This reflects the purposes of the evangelists.  John’s purpose is to show the Lord Jesus as the Son of God, equal to the Father in glory, power, and eternity.  Therefore, John presents the Lord’s teachings on this subject, and on this subject he necessarily spoke in a way distinct from how he spoke on moral matters such as “who is my neighbor”.  Matthew emphasized the Lord’s moral teachings while also showing that he was the long-awaited Messiah with the purpose of encouraging the new Christians to persevere during the persecution launched on them by the Jewish authorities in Jerusalem.

The reason Matthew includes these verses, so different from the rest of his Gospel, is to reveal the teaching that the Father had revealed to  “the childlike”, who stand in contrast to the citizens of Bethsaida and Capernaum whom the Lord had just severely reproached for their lack of repentance: the equality of the Son with the Father and the profound intimacy these Divine Persons share with one another.

“I give praise to you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth.”  The Son is lost in wonder at the Father’s marvelous Providence and beauty of its fulfillment.  If the Son so marvels at it, how much more should we.  “Although you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned you have revealed them to the childlike.”  That is, the Father has not actively “hidden” his revelation from “the wise and the learned”, but he has allowed them, in their pride, to miss it.  The wise and the learned had even more of a chance to receive the wisdom of God than anyone else did, for they had the whole of the Scriptures available to them as well as philosophy and knowledge of the natural sciences.  The magi from Gentile Persia were able to use their knowledge to understand that a new King of the Jews has been born in Judea.  But the wise and the learned among the Jewish leadership, who had the Lord and his teachings among them, chose to hide themselves from the wisdom he offered so freely.  “You have revealed them to the childlike” is not quite correct.  This should be translated “to children”, “to infants”, or “to the unlearned”.  To “children”, who do believe what their parents to them and seek to please them; to “infants”, who feed on spiritual milk (cf. 1 Peter 2, 2-3); to “the unlearned”, who yearn for the Gospel (Acts 16, 9).  Surveying all that the Father has done, is doing, and will do, the Son adoringly reflects, “Father, such has been your gracious will.”

“All things have been handed over to me by my Father.”  Besides sounding like a verse from the Gospel of St. John, this resembles Luke 10, 22: “All things are delivered to me by my Father. And no one knows who the Son is, but the Father: and who the Father is, but the Son and to whom the Son will reveal him.”  Luke reports that the Lord said this when his seventy-two disciples returned from their mission to the cities of Israel.”  The Lord was explaining to his disciples that they were sharing in the work of revelation entrusted to him by the Father.  The context in Matthew is the rebuke of the unrepentant towns despite his miracles and teaching: although he had revealed ancient mysteries to the people there, they had not reformed.

“No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal him.”  The Greek word translated here as “knows” means “to recognize” or “to discern”.  The sense is of one having personal, intimate, knowledge of another.  The Father, then, knows the Son for who he is, and knows his heart as well.  The Father and Son know each other in ways no one else ever could except “anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal him.”  The Son offers sacred knowledge: to see God face to face.  As St. John writes in his first letter: “We shall see him as he is” (1 John 3, 2).  This is promised not to those who refuse true wisdom and still call themselves wise, but to those who strive for holiness.