In our Liturgical Calender, this Sunday is already the Second Sunday in ordinary time. But being the third Sunday of January, we celebrate the feast of Santo Niño in the Philippines. A liturgical celebration particular to the Catholic Church in the Philippines in honor of the Child Jesus. The Santo Niño or the icon of Jesus as child is related to the history of Christianity in the land, and it highlights a devotion to the Child Jesus who came to the Filipino soil as a gift during the arrival of Christianity in the country. The child Jesus has a special place in the hearts of Filipino Catholics. For through him the first Filipinos embraced the Christian faith. This devotion to the child Jesus is already centuries-old, and it is a testament that the gospel and God's salvation is for all God's children. It is the Lord who visits his people and dwells among them. And it is not just the child that was physically and by age a child. In celebrating this feast the Filipinos remember that Jesus is forever a child, the Son of God. As in the words of Pope Francis: "Jesus is ever young because of his lifetime disposition of being a son". The Devotion to the child Jesus comes down also to a celebration of the humility of God and his commitment to our salvation in that he chose to become like us. Hence, for the Filipinos, the Santo Nino gives material representation to the mystery of the Incarnation; and the feast delivers the same lessons as the solemnity of Christmas. It is the Filipino way of professing faith in the God who became man, the Emmanuel.

The gospel reading for this feast of the Santo Niño or the Child Jesus is taken from St. Matthew 18: 1- 5, 10. Here the disciples ask Jesus who is the greatest in the kingdom of God? With this question, the disciples are somehow revealing something that in the kingdoms of this world there are some conditions for greatness. For example: if you have connections; if you have money; if you have a good name; if people tremble before you; if you are wealthy; if you are well-connected; if you can drop names in the office; if you have arms; if you have the influence to intimidate people, then you would be counted as one of the greatest in the kingdoms of this world. But in our text, and according to Jesus greatness in the kingdom of heaven can be found in a child. Jesus presents a child to them and challenges them unless they change and become like little children they cannot enter the kingdom of God. He also tells them that to be a child is to make oneself humble and little if we want to belong to that kingdom. To be a child also means to receive the little ones: the poor, and the neglected. And by receiving the little ones we receive Jesus the child. He is in the little ones. He is in the child. He is the kingdom. Meaning we need to enter the mind of Jesus; his littleness; his humility; his presence among the poor in order to belong to the kingdom of God.

Our societies today are obsessed with greatness. We all seek out greatness. Often we seek it out in others; and it is not just toward others; often it comes naturally to us to want to know who is the greatest at any given thing. We want something great to worship; to look up to, to follow, to seek after. We seek to be our own idols and to be great in our own eyes. We ask questions like: who is the greatest basketball player of all time? Who is the greatest football player? Who is the greatest swimmer? Who is the greatest preacher? Who is the greatest Formator? Who is the greatest teacher? Who is the greatest cook? Who is the greatest evangelist? In some churches people take pride in the fact that they belong to the oldest church; or their family has been a part of this church since the beginning. We have got the biggest youth group. We have got the best programs. We have got the latest technology. We are the most doctrinally sound. We are the most missionary. We are the best. Whatever it is we can find a way to argue our own greatness. And from the time that I was a very small child, I can remember teachers and parents and pretty much everyone repeating this refrain that “we live in the greatest nation on earth.” Whatever that means I think we often think about that concept of greatness. Yes, people want to be like the greatest. It is human nature I suppose to want to be great at something; to be admired; to be able to accomplish something. The disciples seem to be caught up in this too.

And what is the measure of our greatness? For some people, it is championships wins, points scored. For other people, it is the amount of money they make or the admiration that they get from other people. There are lots of different ways to measure greatness in this world. And I suppose that is why the debate rages on about who is the greatest of this or that. Of course, many of us do not exactly qualify as the greatest in a lot of categories. But that is okay. It is okay not to be the greatest in the kingdoms of the world. Remember: “we may not be the biggest fish in the ocean but maybe we can be the biggest fish in our little pond”. We just narrow the field a little bit and we think about our neighborhood.

As we celebrate in the Philippines and in many parts of the world where we have a Filipino community, the Feast of Santo Niño, the Christ child, we are being reminded by the Gospel that God saving action comes through Jesus Christ his child and greatness can be found in a child. How to become great in the kingdom of God? Who is the greatest in this kingdom? To be great in the kingdom of God we need to be like children. And when we say to be like children it means we need to have the characters of little children. Therefore we can learn a lot from Children because we are also children of God because of baptism.