This is the season when students are getting accustomed to a new school year. Each Fall, I think of my many years in the classroom at Jesuit universities and am reminded of phrases associated with the 27 schools founded by my Order. These schools tell students that Jesuit education doesn’t just teach one how to make a living. It also teaches them how to live. A spin-off of this thinking is that we try to produce “men and women for others” in the tradition of Jesus.
Mass has these same goals. In this sacred context of the sacrament, we learn how to live and become people “for others.” This week’s Gospel reinforces these thoughts—but to understand how it echoes Jesuit orientation, we need to get a deeper sense of the first-century culture within which Jesus lived.
A surface reading of the passage leads us to think that Jesus instructed his apostles to be hospitable toward children. The apostles had been arguing about who was the greatest among them, and Jesus placed a child in their midst to answer their questions. “Whoever receives one child such as this in my name receives me.” In doing this, they will also receive the One who sent Jesus.
What modern readers need to know is that when Jesus hugged the child and greeted it warmly, Mark was NOT portraying Jesus as someone who was simply kind to children. Instead, Jesus was calling their attention to one who symbolized the “lowest level” of society. It was children who held that unpleasant distinction. Mr. Trump’s former press secretary said that his “core” followers did not know that in private he spoke of them disparagingly as “basement dwellers” for whom he had no interest other than getting their votes. Jesus was pointing to the “cellar dwellers” of society when he pointed to a child. Such persons were the ones who should receive the attention of his apostles. Children were the “basement dwellers” of his time. They held the status of little more than of a slave.
30% died at birth while 60% died by age 16. Moreover, children had no rights, and were the last to be fed. Proverbs and Sirach said that fathers should physically punish their sons lest they suffer abuse or neglect in later life (Prov 13:24; 19:18; 22:15; 23:13-14; 29:15, 17, 19; Sir 30:1-13). As biblical exegete John Pilch noted: “This does not mean that children were not loved or appreciated. Mediterranean discipline fuses love with violence as parents explain: “We only do this because we love them.” Even God disciplines “him whom he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives” (Prov 3:11-12). 1200 years later, the great St.Thomas Aquinas even described the status of children in terms that seem abhorrent to us. He said that when rescuing people from a fire, a man should first save his father, mother, wife, and children (in that order).
In today’s Gospel passage, we might think Jesus is saying that we need to treat children kindly. While that understanding is not wrong, it is not his main message. Rather, Jesus is telling his followers that it is the least among us who we should serve. It is those without status or without power who true Christians serve. Recall, too, the scripture that echoes this thought when Jesus says he came not to be served but to serve. That is his answer to who is the greatest among us. Evangelist Mark also countered false teachers who saw Jesus as a divine miracle worker and themselves as successors. Thus, Mark emphasized service and humility—symbolized by the cross.
The teaching is still counter-cultural since we are raised to be hired into a fine job, seek promotions, acquire leadership roles with “perks,” and “ladder climb” throughout life. By contrast, Jesus is telling you and me that our most basic identity is to be, as the Jesuit motto states, a “man or woman for others.”
Today’s reading is timely for people associated with Boston College—a Jesuit university regarded as one of the country’s finest educational institutions. This is the weekend on which they play what is now called their “Red Bandanna” football game. Just as Jesus used the symbol of a child to illustrate his point, so on our altar is the symbol of a red bandanna which commemorates the life of a Boston College graduate. He embodied being a “man for others” when 9/11 took place. Several months after that tragedy occurred, his parents learned the details of how their son perished that day. He held a well-paying position and worked on an upper floor of the World Trade Center. As stated in Wikipedia, survivors
“. . . didn’t know his name. They didn’t know where he came from. But they knew the man in the red bandana had saved their lives. He called for fire extinguishers to fight back the flames. He tended to the wounded. He led those survivors down the stairs to safety and carried a woman on his shoulders down 17 flights. Then he went back. Back up all those flights. Then back down again, bringing more wounded to safety. Until that moment when the tower fell.”
Welles Remy Crowther’s bravery and selflessness have inspired numerous tributes. In 2024, Rockland County introduced a cyber detection dog named “Remy” in his honor. Remy, a black lab trained to detect electronic devices used in criminal activities, is one of only 100 “cyber dogs” in the United States. The dog wears a red bandana, symbolizing Crowther’s iconic red bandana worn during the 9/11 rescue efforts.
Each year, the home football game closest to 9/11 sees Boston College players wear Crowther’s name on their jerseys along with their number appearing as a red bandanna. Many in attendance wear red bandannas showing their solidarity with a BC graduate whose heroic, Christian sacrifice embodied a vision they were trying to incarnate.
So this week we have a child, a red bandanna, and a cross—as symbols of the service that today’s Gospel states is what identifies us as Christians. What follows are reflections you might spend private time considering:
If you’re not in service to others, you’re not living the Christian life.
True honor can be found in the most unlikely places.
“Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.”
“ . . . anybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve… You don’t have to know [Einstein’s theory of relativity] to serve. You only need a heart filled with [desire to do the right thing]”
And if the notion of service is intimidating, think of what Mother Teresa said: “If you can’t feed a hundred people, then feed just one.”
He who shuts his ear to the cry of the poor will himself also call and not be heard. (Proverbs)
Service is God’s therapeutic counsel telling you how to be fully you.
And the Christian notion of service is “wonderful because nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.”
“A bone to the dog is not charity. Charity is the bone shared with the dog, when you are just as hungry as the dog.”