WEDNESDAY, March 24 (Óscar Romero and the Martyrs of San Salvador)

Mark 10:1-16. Let the little children come to me; do not stop them.

"Whatever my sins may be," says Mr. Average Contemporary Christian, "the last thing I would dream of doing would be to stop any child from coming to Christ." This is easily said, even easily believed. But we watched a TV documentary the other evening on juvenile delinquency. So many of the things we cheerfully put up with--slums, poverty, social neglect, racial and ethnic ghettoes--do stop children from coming to the Lord of life. All this is in our own land. In other lands, millions of children live in desperate poverty, with none to give them either the Bread of Life or daily bread for their bodies.

Of course you and I do nothing actively to stop any child, or anybody else, from coming to Christ. But we may do so, nevertheless, effectively by our neglect, by our leaving undone the things we ought to do to make this a better world for all children.

We Americans easily go into sentimental raptures about children: how we love them all! But the Lord who calls all children to himself demands more than empty sentimentalism from us. (1965)

PRAY for the Diocese of Bunbury (Western Australia, Australia)

Ps 119:145-176 * 128, 129, 130; Exodus 7:8-24; 2 Corinthians 2:14-3:6

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