Ezekiel is handed a scroll covered front and back with lamentation and mourning and woe, and God tells him to eat it. Swallow it whole. And when the prophet does, the bitter thing tastes like honey in his mouth (Ezekiel 3:3). We tend to treat the word of God the way we treat everything else we consume, in pieces, on our terms, keeping what suits us and setting aside the parts that indict us. Ezekiel gets no such option. He takes it whole or he has nothing to say. And today the Church gives us Clare of Assisi, a girl of 18 who did exactly that with the Gospel and then spent 41 years refusing every offer to soften it, even when the offer came from a pope.

The Readings

First Reading: Ezekiel 2:8-3:4

“But you, son of man, hear what I say to you; be not rebellious like that rebellious house; open your mouth, and eat what I give you.” And when I looked, behold, a hand was stretched out to me, and lo, a written scroll was in it; and he spread it before me; and it had writing on the front and on the back, and there were written on it words of lamentation and mourning and woe.

And he said to me, “Son of man, eat what is offered to you; eat this scroll, and go, speak to the house of Israel.” So I opened my mouth, and he gave me the scroll to eat. And he said to me, “Son of man, eat this scroll that I give you and fill your stomach with it.” Then I ate it; and it was in my mouth as sweet as honey.

And he said to me, “Son of man, go, get you to the house of Israel, and speak with my words to them.”

Gospel: Matthew 18:1-5, 10, 12-14

At that time the disciples came to Jesus, saying, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” And calling to him a child, he put him in the midst of them, and said, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me.”

“See that you do not despise one of these little ones; for I tell you that in heaven their angels always behold the face of my Father who is in heaven.

“What do you think? If a man has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the hills and go in search of the one that went astray? And if he finds it, truly, I say to you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine that never went astray. So it is not the will of my Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish.”

Scriptural Analysis

Start with the title Ezekiel keeps getting called. “Son of man.” It shows up more than ninety times in this book, and the first use is here, at his commissioning. Ezekiel is in exile, living in unclean territory by the river Chebar, and God will not give him a grand name. He is one mortal among many, an exile like the rest of them, brought low.^[1] Gregory the Great saw the point exactly: Ezekiel is lifted up into heaven and shown mysteries the rest of us cannot see, and precisely then God calls him “son of man,” so that he will not forget who he is or take the glory of the vision as his own.^[2] The prophet is small before the word he carries. That is the arrangement.

The people he is sent to are described the other way. A nation of rebels. A rebellious house. The phrase repeats through these chapters like a drumbeat (Ezekiel 2:5, 2:6, 2:8, 3:9). Their rebellion is arrogance toward God, rejection of his commandments, and a settled refusal to listen, and Ezekiel insists it is grave precisely because they chose it freely.^[3] You can see it in their faces, the commentary says, which is a striking thing to say about a sin. So God demands from his prophet the exact opposite disposition: “be not rebellious like that rebellious house” (Ezekiel 2:8). The contrast is the whole point. Israel will not open its ears. Ezekiel is told to open his mouth.

Then comes the scroll. A hand appears, and the scroll is unrolled, and it is written on both sides, front and back, which in the ancient world meant it was full. There was no more room. And what fills it is lamentation and mourning and woe (Ezekiel 2:10). Eating it is a sign to the people that this prophet is faithfully passing on God’s word and has not trimmed it, has not softened the edges, has not toned it down to make it land better.^[4] Hippolytus read the two-sided writing as the two Testaments, the Old on the reverse and the New on the front, one scroll, one word, and you cannot understand the inside without reading the outside.^[5] Jerome, blunt as ever: unless we eat the open book first, we cannot teach the children of Israel.^[6]

And here is the strange part. The scroll of woe tastes like honey. Origen noticed that the book contains the woe of those perishing, the mourning of those being saved, and the lamentation of those in between, and that Scripture is sweet at the first chewing and turns bitter as you actually come to know it.^[7] Gregory pushed the metaphor further and made it pastoral: Scripture is food and drink both. The obscure passages are food, because they must be chewed, explained, worked over before you can swallow them. The plain passages are drink, because you take them straight. Ezekiel is told to eat the scroll rather than drink it, which is Gregory’s way of saying, meditate on this teaching and understand it well.^[8] The sweetness comes from a hard word being taken all the way in, chewed and digested until it is part of the man.

Which brings us to the Gospel, and to a question that sounds spiritual until you see where it came from. “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” Matthew places this immediately after the temple tax at Capernaum, where Jesus provided the coin for himself and Peter and no one else, and after Caesarea Philippi, where Peter was made the foundation and given the keys, and after the Transfiguration, where Peter, James, and John went up the mountain while the other nine stayed below and failed to cast out a demon. The disciples have been watching Peter get singled out over and over, and now they want to know where they rank.^[9] Aquinas says the same thing more bluntly. Since they were still weak, they suffered some movement of zeal and envy.^[10]

So Jesus answers with a child. In first-century Judaism, a child had no legal standing, no social weight, no property, and no voice. Jesus puts the child in the middle as an example of a social nobody, someone with no rank at all to defend.^[11] The demand is a turn: “unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:3). The verb matters. Turn away from the whole ranking system. And notice the stakes have shifted from the question asked. They wanted to know who scores highest. Jesus tells them that on their current trajectory they do not get in the door at all. The language of “will not enter” echoes Israel disinherited from the promised land after following Moses into the desert (Numbers 20:24), which is a sobering parallel for men who have already left everything to follow Christ.^[12]

Aquinas gathers three readings of the child from the tradition. Chrysostom takes him as a literal child, free of the passions, held up as an example. Another reading has Christ himself as the little one standing in their midst, the one who is among them as one who serves (Luke 22:27). A third takes the child as the Holy Spirit, who makes men little, because he is the Spirit of humility (Ezekiel 36:27).^[13] Then Aquinas raises the objection that should occur to us: perfection is in charity, so why is humility the measure? His answer is that humility necessarily accompanies charity. Pride has two parts, disordered affection and a disordered estimate of oneself. Humility inverts both. The humble man does not chase his own excellence and does not consider himself worthy. So the more a man has of charity, the more he has of humility, and the two rise together.^[14] Humility is what charity looks like from the inside.

Then the child shifts roles. In verses 2 through 4, the child is what you imitate. In verse 5 the child is who you receive: “whoever receives one such child in my name receives me.” The little one is no longer the model, but the person in front of you, the disciple of no account, the one Matthew will call a “little one” through the rest of the chapter.^[15] And Jesus attaches two guarantees to that person. Their angels always behold the face of the Father, which is a claim about access. These are the guardian angels the Church teaches each of us has, and the Old Testament had already assumed as much (Psalm 91:11; Tobit 12:12-15). If beings who look directly at God are assigned to the care of these nobodies, contempt for them is not a small sin.^[16] Aquinas adds a reason with real weight: they are called their angels because there is one society of angels and men, and the little ones are fellow citizens of the heavenly city.^[17]

The second guarantee is the shepherd. Jesus reaches for Ezekiel 34, where God indicts the shepherds of Israel because “the strayed you have not brought back” and then promises to do the job himself: “I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed.”^[18] So the man leaving ninety-nine sheep on the hills is God keeping that promise. Aquinas reads the hundred as the whole company of rational creatures and the one that wandered as the human race, gone astray through one man (1 Peter 2:25).^[19] And he asks the honest question about the joy. Why more joy over the one? Because a commander loves the soldier who fell in battle and then fought manfully afterward more than the one who never fell and always fights half-heartedly.^[20] Jesus closes by understating what he means. It is not the Father’s will that one of these little ones should perish. Aquinas catches it: he says less and signifies more, because the Father’s will is that they be saved (1 Timothy 2:4). If he did not will it, he would not send the angels.^[21]

Set the two readings side by side, and the same movement runs through both. Ezekiel is made small so he can carry a word not his own. The disciples are told to become small so they can enter a kingdom that is not theirs by right. And the God who does the sending is the God who goes out after the one that wandered off. The prophet swallows the scroll of woe and finds honey. The disciple accepts the status of a nobody and finds he is the one the shepherd crosses the hills to find.

Daily Application

Clare of Assisi took the scroll whole. At 15 she refused to marry. At 18 she slipped out of her father’s house at night, met friars on the road carrying torches, traded a jeweled belt for a knotted rope, and let Francis cut off her hair. Her father and uncles stormed the convent, and she clung to the altar and pulled off her veil to show them the cropped head underneath. That is the part everyone remembers. The harder part is the 41 years that followed, and the pressure that never let up.

Because the pressure to soften it came from the top. When the pope himself tried to persuade her to accept some property, to let the sisters hold something in common so they would not depend on daily alms, Clare answered: “I need to be absolved from my sins, but I do not wish to be absolved from the obligation of following Jesus Christ.” She did moderate the physical austerity when it became cruel, telling her sisters plainly, “Our bodies are not made of brass.” She would not moderate the poverty. She knew the difference between rigor that serves the Gospel and rigor that only bruises the body. She got papal approval of her Rule days before she died, the first Rule written for religious women by a woman. That is what eating the scroll looks like over four decades.

So put the question to yourself the way the disciples asked it, since that is honestly how most of us ask it. Where do I rank? We ask it about the parish, about the family, about the job, about who got asked to serve on what and who did not. The disciples asked it out loud and got an answer about whether they would enter at all. Jesus told them the scoreboard itself is the obstacle. Every hour you spend measuring your position is an hour you are not turning, and turning is the only door.

Here is where the two readings press on the same nerve. You cannot preach a word you have not swallowed, and you cannot swallow it while you are protecting your standing. Ezekiel had to eat lamentation and woe before he could speak to a people who would not listen. Clare had to accept being nobody, a woman behind a wall in a small Umbrian town, before popes and cardinals and bishops started climbing that hill to consult her. She never left San Damiano. They came to her. The order is not accidental, and it cannot be reversed. Humility first, then whatever God chooses to do with you, and the second is entirely his business.

Which means the practical work this week is smaller and harder than a resolution. Find the place where you are still negotiating with the Gospel, the one clause you keep asking to be absolved from. It is usually specific. A relationship you know is disordered and keep reframing. Money you have decided is yours by right. A grudge you have theologized into discernment. Take that one clause and swallow it whole, without amendment, the way Clare answered the pope. It will taste bitter going down. Ezekiel says it turns to honey.

And then look for the one who wandered off. The Father’s will is that not a single little one perish, and he goes out after them personally. Someone has drifted from your parish, your family, your circle of friends, and everyone has quietly agreed to let it stand. You are the ninety-nine standing safe on the hill wondering who is greatest. Go find them. Christ has already gone; catch up with him.

Take the whole scroll, and become small enough to carry it.

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Notes

1. The Navarre Bible: Major Prophets, commentary on Ezekiel 2:1 (Dublin: Four Courts Press), note on “son of man.” ↩
2. Gregory the Great, Homiliae in Ezechielem prophetam 1.12.22, quoted in The Navarre Bible: Major Prophets, commentary on Ezekiel 2:1. ↩
3. The Navarre Bible: Major Prophets, commentary on Ezekiel 2:3. ↩
4. The Navarre Bible: Major Prophets, commentary on Ezekiel 2:8-3:3. ↩
5. Hippolytus, Fragment 3, in Kenneth Stevenson and Michael Glerup, eds., Ezekiel, Daniel, Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, Old Testament XIII (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2008), 19. ↩
6. Jerome, Commentary on Ezekiel 1.3.1, in Stevenson and Glerup, Ezekiel, Daniel, 20. ↩
7. Origen, Commentary on the Gospel of John 5.7, in Stevenson and Glerup, Ezekiel, Daniel, 20. ↩
8. Gregory the Great, Homilies on Ezekiel 1.10.3, in Stevenson and Glerup, Ezekiel, Daniel, 20; see also Homiliae in Ezechielem prophetam 1.10.3, quoted in The Navarre Bible: Major Prophets, commentary on Ezekiel 2:8-3:3. ↩
9. Edward Sri and Curtis Mitch, The Gospel of Matthew, Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2010), 226, commentary on Matthew 18:1. ↩
10. Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, chap. 18, lect. 1, no. 1486. ↩
11. Daniel J. Harrington, The Gospel of Matthew, Sacra Pagina 1 (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1991), 264, note on Matthew 18:2. ↩
12. Sri and Mitch, The Gospel of Matthew, 227, commentary on Matthew 18:2-4. ↩
13. Aquinas, Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, chap. 18, lect. 1, no. 1488. ↩
14. Aquinas, Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, chap. 18, lect. 1, no. 1491. ↩
15. Sri and Mitch, The Gospel of Matthew, 227, commentary on Matthew 18:5. ↩
16. Sri and Mitch, The Gospel of Matthew, 230, commentary on Matthew 18:10-14; Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed. (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997), no. 336. ↩
17. Aquinas, Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, chap. 18, lect. 1, no. 1504. ↩
18. Sri and Mitch, The Gospel of Matthew, 230, commentary on Matthew 18:10-14; Harrington, The Gospel of Matthew, 265, note on Matthew 18:12. ↩
19. Aquinas, Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, chap. 18, lect. 2, no. 1510. ↩
20. Aquinas, Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, chap. 18, lect. 2, no. 1512. ↩
21. Aquinas, Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, chap. 18, lect. 2, no. 1513. ↩