Homily for the Memorial of Saint Teresa of Jesus, Virgin and Doctor of the Church

In today’s Gospel passage, Jesus criticized the experts of the Jewish Law for taking “away the key of knowledge.” They had rejected the teaching of Jesus and tried to keep others from coming to know God through that teaching. They had not been true to their calling as teachers of the ways of God. Jesus revealed God more fully than any other human being could. In rejecting His teaching, they were failing to recognize that God was at work in Jesus.

God has given us the key to knowing Him by giving us Jesus. He is the key to this special knowledge, and we will always be learning from Him. The mistake is to think that we are fully informed about the things of God. We are more like infants, always having so much to learn. That is why Jesus had prayed to the LORD of heaven and earth, saying, “You have hidden these things from the learned and the clever and have revealed them to infants.” Only when we recognize this, will we come to know God more fully. +