“Suffer the Little Children”
Dear St. Rita Families,
As we join in prayer for all the victims of this week’s horrific attacks in Minneapolis and for everyone affected, I would like to reflect with you about innocence, compromise, and sin. Have you noticed that this phrase – “suffer the little children” – seems to be the mantra of sin throughout the ages? It’s easy to see in the modern world. Whether it is the tragedy that unfolded at Annunciation Catholic Church and School in Minneapolis on Wednesday, or the scourge of abortion, or targeted sexual exploitation in schools and libraries, online or on Epstein’s island, or the Church’s own abuse scandals of recent years (and there are countless other examples), the children are the ones who suffer the most. We could extend the causes, too – who are the ones made helpless by war, divorce, and the other machinations of “people in charge”? The children are at the mercy of everyone else, and everyone else seems anything but merciful.
Despite this, society readily extols – even idolizes – the innocence of children, holds them up as models of purity (“they don’t see race,” for example), even placing them in ingenuity and smarts above adults (pick any number of kids’ movies or shows). There is a nostalgia for the time of youth when things “weren’t so complicated.” It’s as if society hasn’t figured out how to deal with adulthood, though I would suggest rather that society hasn’t figured out how to deal with sin. We feel as if something interiorly has been compromised, that something has had to be compromised in order to survive the situations and circumstances that life has thrown at us, in order to live at peace with others in this crazy world of ours.
And the compromise is killing us. Literally.
When the compromise becomes so interiorly jarring, so unreconcilable with peace in my heart or in my life, something has to give. All the more so because compromise was supposed to bring peace. It was supposed to remove the difficulty so we could live together. The reason certain kinds of compromise don’t resolve issues is because it is compromise with sin. You’ve perhaps heard the joke, “The easiest way to get rid of temptation is to give in to it!” And it’s true…for about 5 minutes: because sin is compromise with evil! Compromise means “with a promise”. Why would I trust a promise made to me by sin? I’ll give in to sin if sin gives me…what? Pleasure? Power? Money? Fame? The only thing that sin gives me is death!
Unfortunately, it also means death for the children. When adults attempt to indoctrinate children with deviant sexual ideologies, they often do so with a false air of innocence. This “other lifestyle” is perfectly fine, goofy and fun and harmless – in a word, innocent. But if those ideologies are compromise with sin (and they are), then indoctrination with them does not preserve innocence – it destroys it!
And this is the fundamental issue. Sin cannot bear the presence of innocence. Sin must either destroy innocence or be destroyed itself. “What connection has Christ with Belial? What union is there between the temple of God and idols?” (2 Cor 6:15-16). “Would that you were cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew you out of my mouth!” (Rev. 3:15-16). “You cannot love both God and mammon” (Mt 6:24). There are countless other verses in Scripture that tell us the same thing. There is no compromise between God and sin, and there can be none with us, either. All the more reason to leave everything behind and follow Christ.
For those who compromise with sin, however, innocence must be destroyed. Is this not why the Catholic Church is denigrated so harshly by the world? She is the Bastion of Innocence, despite the sometimes grievous sins of Her members, and she willingly proclaims Herself to be the spotless Bride of Christ, the innocent Body of Christ – not by Her own efforts, but because He has made Her so! But if She can be destroyed, then the world can claim that it was OK to sin, that true innocence was never possible, that the Church’s call to conversion came itself from a place of corruption, that compromise with sin and death always is and was inevitable. Fortunately for us, this is nothing but a sinister attempt by the world to justify itself and its own sin, because the world cannot honestly look itself in the mirror without falling into endless despair. What darkness is caused by sin!
You see, the Church exists not because somehow we were better people than those schmuckety sinners out there. The Church exists because the only truly Innocent One – Jesus Christ, God-Become-Man – allowed Himself to be killed by our sin, by MY sin. Sin could not bear the presence of the Innocent One on this earth, and so it killed Him. But it could not hold Him. When He rose from the dead, dispelling all darkness and despair, He gave all sinners hope. He told us it is possible to love God alone and not mammon, to be hot and not lukewarm, to be the Temple of the Living God and not of idols. It is possible only by His Grace, but it is possible. If only all people who have been compromised by sin would lay their sin at the feet of Jesus! Then, they too could find innocence again.
That phrase – suffer the little children – is part of an old translation of Mk 10:14: “Suffer the little children to come unto Me,” and it should be the mantra of our times. It may be painful – a real suffering at first – for those who try to destroy the innocence of children to allow the children to approach Jesus. It will likewise be a suffering for those people themselves to approach Jesus. If only they would go to Him with their sin and not to these other, little, innocent ones! Because in truth, the children are not totally innocent. Perhaps they haven’t committed the worst sins out there, but they still need Jesus as much as the next guy. Destroying the children won’t fix the problems that people like the Annunciation shooter were dealing with. Only Jesus’ destruction deals with our sin and brings us forgiveness, healing, peace, and salvation. And His destruction already happened. All we have to do is reap the benefits of His Death and Resurrection by laying our sin at His feet (there ought not to be any fear here: my sin can’t kill him again, and He wants to give me life).
And when we do that, we will have taken the first step in suffering the little children, suffering them to come unto Jesus.
In Christ,
Fr. Christensen