A Theology of Littleness

Pope Benedict XVI and G.K. Chesterton are two authors whose writings always seem to "feed" me - they're uplifting, encouraging and remind me not to take myself too seriously. I'm currently reading Salt of the Earth: The Church at the End of the Millennium, an interview between Cardinal Ratzinger and author Peter Seewald dating from 1996...

Q. "Whoever can be as small as this child", it says in the New Testament in Matthew, "is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven."

A. The theology of littleness is a basic category of Christianity. After all, the tenor of our faith is that God's distinctive greatness is revealed precisely in powerlessness. That in the long run, the strength of history is precisely in those who love, which is to say, in a strength that, properly speaking, cannot be measured according to categories of power. So in order to show who he is, God consciously revealed himself in the powerlessness of Nazareth and Golgotha. Thus, it is not the one who can destroy the most who is the most powerful...but, on the contrary, the least power of love is already greater than the greatest power of destruction.

And here are a few related excerpts from G.K. Chesterton's The Everlasting Man...more aimed at the Christmas story, but certainly very pertinent to the Easter season...

A mass of legend and literature, which increases and will never end, has repeated and rung the changes on that single paradox; that the hands that had made the sun and stars were too small to reach the huge heads of the cattle. Upon this paradox, we might almost say upon this jest, all the literature of our faith is founded...

I mean that all the eyes of wonder and worship which had been turned outwards to the largest thing were now turned inward to the smallest...

It is true that the spiritual spiral henceforward works inwards instead of outwards, and in that sense is centripical and not centrifugal. The faith becomes, in more ways than one, a religion of little things.

A Sense of Mystery or Wonder

Another excerpt from Fr. Benedict Groeschel's A Virtue Driven Life...

First part of (another) piece that he quotes from Cardinal Newman:

A religious mind is ever marvelling, and irreligious men laugh and scoff at it because it marvels. A religious mind is ever looking out of itself, is ever pondering God's words, is ever "looking into" them with the Angels, is ever realizing to itself Him on whom it depends, and who is the centre of all truth and good. Carnal and proud minds are contented with self; they like to remain at home; when they hear of mysteries, they have no devout curiosity to go and see the great sight, though it be ever so little out of their way; and when it actually falls in their path, they stumble at it.

Then some follow-up from Father Groeschel...

While it is true that some people are too credulous, even superstitious, about private revelations, others with little thought will assume they could never happen. They therefore dismiss shrines like Lourdes, Fatima, or Paray-le-Monial, and discount the revelations of God's love for the human race through the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The skeptics might accept Saint Francis because he spoke to the birds and wrote nice prayers, but they would forget that he also had visions of Christ and received the stigmata. They favor a Christ walking through the fields and greeting the lepers, but they are intimidated by the thought that He cured and that He rose physically from the dead. They lack any sense of mystery or wonder. They reduce religion to something they can measure with their own limited minds.