Unless you turn and become like children

2 OCTOBER (Mt 18,1-5.10)

We can describe the conversion by using some images. In our chest there is a heart of stone, unable to feel like Christ the Lord. It is urgent to ask the Holy Spirit to come, intervene, put in its place a heart of flesh capable of loving, because it is all tuned, molded and formed on the heart of Jesus. We have a mind that is recalcitrant, does not want to be enlightened by the wisdom and divine knowledge because it decided that the human folly and foolishness are the only rule of his acting and his working. We must put ourselves in prayer, with a contrite, humiliated, torn heartand ask the Spirit of God that removes all foolishness and put in its place his divine and eternal wisdom and intelligence.

In the world, idolatry, impiety and superstition reign today. The Word of the Lord is replaced by the many thoughts and desires of our heart. Thinkfor a moment the infinite evil that the world of magic spreads. The first commandment today is violated, transgressed, altered, neglected, shunnedmore than any other. There is a religious subculture that scares. There are the worshipers simultaneously of God and Satan, of good and evil, of idolatry and the true religion, of the world of the occult and that of light. One receives the Eucharist and then indulges in esoteric and sinfulpractices to be freed from some indisposition of the body or the spirit.

This mixture of piety and impiety, idolatry and true worship, Eucharist and practice of the occult is in the Christian that attends, that loves theVirgin Mary, that takes part in the Holy Mass, that holds the Holy Rosary in his hands. The people that attends the world of superstition andirreligion often is the one that turns around the altar of the Lord. It does this with an ease that scares, frightens, so deeply rooted are in the heartcertain beliefs and certain modes of conceiving the relationship with the sacred, with the Holy One, with truth, justice and holiness.

Then, conversion is necessary, which is abandonment of what belongs to the world of superstition to enter the world of purest thought of God;which is still leaving our false human security to put ourselves entirely in the hands of our God and Lord. When Jesus exhorts us to become likelittle children, means just this: leaving the world that trusts in itself, in its own strength, in the findings of its own mind, its heart, its muscles, its strength to immerse ourselves in God, the only one from whom we must depend for all the days of our lives.

At that time the disciples approached Jesus and said, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” He called a child over, placed it in their midst, and said, “Amen, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever receives one child such as this in my name receives me. “See that you do not despise one of these little ones, for I say to you that their angels in heaven always look upon the face of my heavenly Father.

You have to choose: whether to be from God, from his Word, from the faith in the Gospel, or to be from us, from our human certainties, from our science and technology, from the findings of our mind, from the thoughts of our hearts. We cannot be together of God and of ourselves, of heavenand earth, of the divine wisdom and human folly. It is necessary to make a choice. If you are not directed to God with unwavering will – and this is the conversion – you remain inexorably in the human world, which is often distinguished and marked by the most frightful form of idolatries. You have to react, decide, make with great firmness for the acceptance in full of the Gospel, this divine Word, which if accepted, marks the beginningof our true and real conversion. No one can decide for us. No one might get converted in our place. The decision is ours alone and no one else’s.

Virgin Mary, Mother of the Redemption, Angels and Saints always keep us in the truth.