Wednesday, May 15 : Saint Leo the Great

Christ loves the childhood he took first into his soul as into his body. Christ loves the childhood that teaches us humility, is the measure of innocence, the model of gentleness. Christ loves childhood : it is to this he directs the conduct of grown men, to this he restores old men. He draws to his own example those whom he is raising up to the eternal kingdom. But if we are to understand how it is possible to come to so wonderful a conversion and by what sort of transformation we are to recover this childlike attitude, let Saint Paul teach us, saying : “Stop being childish in your thinking. In respect to evil be like infants, but in your thinking be mature” (1 Cor 14:20). It does not mean, then, that we are to go back to the games of our childhood or to the gaucheness of our early beginnings but we are to draw from it something fitting for those of mature years. That is to say : quickly pacifying interior agitation, quickly restoring calm, completely setting aside wrongs, being wholly indifferent to honors, loving to meet together, maintaining evenness of temper as though it were something natural. For indeed, it is a great good to know nothing of causing harm and have no attraction for wrong (…) ; to pay back no one evil for evil (Rm 12:17) is the interior peace that belongs to children (…) This is the kind of humility the Savior child teaches us after being worshiped by the Wise Men.

Roman Extraordinary (Tridentine) Daily Readings – rosary,team