A passage from today’s gospel struck me in a fresh and astonishing way today. It’s the final few verses in which Jesus emphasizes his identity as the lowliest one by embracing a child.

“If anyone wishes to be first,
he shall be the last of all and the servant of all.”
Taking a child, he placed it in their midst,
and putting his arms around it, he said to them,
“Whoever receives one child such as this in my name, receives me;
and whoever receives me,
receives not me but the One who sent me.”

In the ancient world children were not mollycoddled and adored like they are today. They were certainly loved by their parents, but they were not surrounded by the sentimentality and gush that we shower on children. Instead, the hierarchy of society was men on top. Women as second class citizens, then slaves, and then children.

Children were potential human beings–no more. They were abused, sold as slaves, prostituted, and thrown away if they weren’t wanted. In the ancient world children were used as fodder for the rituals of human sacrifice. In Carthage, for instance, infant and child skeletons by the thousands have been uncovered by archeologists proving the extent of child sacrifice in the ancient Middle East.

The Roman historian Plutarch, writing in the first century chronicles the practice

“With  full  knowledge  and  under standing  they  [the  Carthaginians] offered up their own children, and those who  had  no  children  would  buy  little ones  from  poor  people  and  cut  their throats  as  if  they were  so  many lambs or  young  birds;  meanwhile  the  mother stood  by  without  a  tear  or  moan;  but should she utter a single moan or let fall a  single  tear,  she  had  to  forfeit  the money, and her child was sacrificed nevertheless; and the whole area before the statue  was  filled  with  a  loud  noise  of flutes  and  drums  so  that  the  cries  of wailing should  not reach the ears of the people.”

Jesus, on the other hand, stands the culture on its head and not only loves and cherishes children, but teaches on children in various other passages. Someone who scandalizes a child or abuses a child deserves to be cast into the sea weighted down with a millstone. To enter the kingdom of God one has to become like a little child.

But today’s passage is most astonishing because Jesus says “Whoever receives one child such as this in my name, receives me; and whoever receives me, receives not me but the One who sent me.”

In other words, like the famous passage in Matthew’s gospel where Jesus says that when we feed, house and clothe and visit the poor we are doing it for him, so if we accept a child we not only accept Jesus Christ, but we also accept God–the one who sent him.

The consequences therefore of NOT accepting the little child are severe. If accepting the child is to accept Christ, then to reject the child is to reject Christ. What we do to these little ones, in other words, we do to him.

So let’s stop and re-examine our own society. We’re so sophisticated aren’t we? Not like those barbarian Carthaginians, Phoenicians and Canaanites. Not like those bloodthirsty Aztecs.

Yet we abuse children through child pornography, human trafficking, prostitution and abuse. Not only that, abortion and infanticide are part of our culture too. Not slitting their throats and throwing them in the fire, but practices like partial birth abortion where the child is delivered feet first, then when the head is still in the birth canal the doctor of death shoves a tool into their soft little head and sucks the baby’s brains out.

While late term abortion is horrible and barbaric, why is it nicer or easier if the fetus is a few weeks younger?

To push this further, what other ways do we reject children? Contraception and sterilization rejects children.

Whenever we reject children we reject life and in rejecting life we reject the one who is the Way, the Truth and the Life.