“Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” We are all well acquainted with this phrase from the Gospel of St. Matthew (18:3).
Who, What, Where and How?
What we need, however, is the answer to the question: “Okay, so how do I ‘turn’?” If becoming like a child is the prerequisite for entrance into the kingdom of heaven (indeed, our Lord uses a double negative to increase the emphasis that it is absolutely impossible without doing so), we had better understand just how it is that we are to become one. The world seems filled with adults behaving childishly and children behaving like depraved adults, but surely this is not what our Lord desires of us.
We have been saturated over the past many years with passive, feckless and infantile spiritualities which pass as being “like Christ.” This, too, cannot be what He wants of us, for it is not the Christ we encounter in the Scriptures or in Tradition.
How is He a Son and eternal child of the Father, but how are we to be children of the Father, participating in His very nature? What is He referring to? Furthermore, what is this Kingdom of Heaven to which I am called? If it is only in the next world, why does our Lord refer to it in this life as weeds growing with wheat or a net with many kinds of fish? If the Kingdom of Heaven is here, then where?
The latest study on the Gospel of St. Matthew is now ready for eager students who wish to continue their examination of God’s Holy Word to find the answer to these and many more questions.
Are You a Disciple?
Scott Hahn and Mark Shea have prepared, in their familiar, informative style, a 28-week course on the Gospel of St. Matthew. The genius of this study is that it requires on the one hand no previous experience with Bible-study (for Scripture was not written for scholars but for disciples) and yet it feeds with substantial food the hungriest souls.
The study materials will take you through each chapter, offering various ranges of magnification so that they can be used by people who are just beginning to look into the Bible as well as by those who already have some background.
We begin with the general themes of Matthew, his purpose and audience, and move to the more particular subject matter chapter by chapter. Finally, with the DVD lectures and podium notes, we will walk through each verse together as we examine the chapter’s salient points. We will pick up the threads of each section, verse by verse, and watch as a veritable tapestry of Divine Sonship is woven before us.
The School of Sonship
We begin with our Lord as a child in a human family and end with the possibility of becoming a child in the Divine family. We “grow” alongside Him through the process of discipleship in the school of sonship, through the Sermon on the Mount, His parables, His miracles, His incomparable humor in the use of hyperbole, His discourse on the Church (in which we shall see that the Kingdom of Heaven begins in His Body the Church) and finally through His Passion, Death, and Resurrection.
The Son has come to make us sons and daughters of His Father, and the Gospel of Matthew is the revelatory outline of becoming His children.
Join Catholic Scripture Study and learn with us how to turn from an orphaned life towards the life your Father desires to give you. Behold in this study the beauty of Christ’s instrument, the Church, our mother, through whom we are given life (“born again”), fed, taught to speak to our Father, instructed, and finally grow up to the age of heavenly childhood, where we, with Jesus and all of the holy children of the Father in heaven, will also be His sons, in “whom He delights.”
© Copyright 2006 Catholic Exchange
Fr. Matthew Kauth is the pastor of St. Francis of Assisi parish in Franklin, NC. He is also the lecturer for Catholic Scripture Study’s new fall study on the Gospel of Matthew as well as the popular CSS study on the Book of Revelation, both written by Dr. Scott Hahn and Mark Shea. All lectures are recorded on DVDs and included with CSS study courses. To learn more about CSS, please visit the website: www.catholicscripturestudy.com.