Monday in the Twenty-Sixth Week of Ordinary Time

Jesus loved the innocence of children, their searching questions, their desire for honest answers, and the humbling labor of their obedience. It’s the way Jesus lived. So, he said, “Whoever welcomes this child in my name welcomes me … and the one who sent me.”

In a book titled “Survivors of Auschwitz,” Fr. Paschal Baumstein tells a story about Edith Stein.  “As she moved through the concentration camp she focused upon the children, youngsters unable to claim the comforts of their mothers. She served these children with an effort made extraordinary by the place and poverty of their circumstances: She washed children’s faces; she cleaned their hands. … She used small, simple, comforting gestures to show respect for the dignity of these young human persons, and she reestablished thereby that these victims … bear the image of God.”¹ 

May we also serve one another well.  When we do, it is Jesus we serve, hidden in a thousand faces.  

1 Fr. Paschal Baumstein, OSB. “Edith Stein: Without The Contradiction,” Spiritual Life, (Fall, 2003): 159.