The Path to Greatness

Michiel Peeters - They had been discussing among themselves […] who was the greatest”. Friends, if someone of us would not desire to become great, he or she would not be truly human. Who doesn’t want to be great, is like someone who is hitting on his own head with a hammer. The desire to become great is one of the natural desires of our heart. We have a duty, towards our nature, to realize ourselves, to become true, to become great.

And when we meet a truly great person, our desire to become great does not shrink, but, on the contrary, explodes. “I would like to be like him or her”.

So it is not strange that, dealing with Jesus, day after day, the disciples feel the desire to be great. In fact, their discussion doesn’t scandalize Jesus at all. Instead, he asks them: “Do you want to be truly great? Do you want to be great like me?” Then he takes a child and places it in the middle, as if saying: “If you want to be great, look at this child: you should be like him.

Your gaze should be like his. You should grow like he grows. This is how I am great. As child is with his mother, so am I with the Father. Receiving everything in every moment from Him, asking everything every moment from Him, enjoying each moment because of His presence. If you want to be great, you should become like a child, too.”

How does a child grow up? Last week we spoke about the criterion of the heart, the instrument we have for entering reality. Always keep this in mind. Now let’s look to three different situations: (a) One situation of a child that is with his parents, who are good people, and he is attentive to what they say and do, and compares it—instinctively, as a child—with his deepest desires. (b) Second situation: a child is with his father and mother, but out of capriciousness or laziness, or of some pathology, he never pays attention to them or—even stranger —follows them like a machine, like a little animal (luckily, in nature, such a situation is difficult to find). (c) Third situation: for some sad reason, a child grows without father or mother to look at.

Which of the three children will have the best chance to grow and to become great, to realize the originality of his personality? Of course, the first one: the one who has an adult to look at, to follow, and who uses the instrument nature has given him—his heart, his original experience—to compare everything this adult says and does with the profound needs of his heart, with the original evidences and needs of his humanity. This one will grow, he will become an adult.

For us, grown-ups, it’s not different. We would remain stuck in our development if we wouldn’t use our hearts. But to truly grow, using our hearts, we should be able to compare their needs with the word and the example of someone great in front of us, greater than us, who already possesses what we desire: we should be able to follow someone. Alone, in a forest, we would still learn something, but with a good teacher in front of us, full of wisdom and sympathy, we could learn much more and much faster.

Mystery respects this method. Therefore, in order to make us grow, to permit us to become great, He took the initiative to come close to us, to become a human company, a teacher, a friend, with whom we can talk and at whom we can look.

Let’s see if we too have this desire to become great; then, if we have run into some genuine Teacher; and then, if our desire is big enough to risk following him.

This translation has not been revised by the author. Fr Michiel Peeters, Tilburg University Chaplaincy.

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