In today's Gospel (Mt 11: 25-27) Jesus says something surprising, even shocking. He says that God has "hidden these things from the wise and the learned, and "revealed them to the childlike." Doesn't is seem odd that God would hide something from some people, while He reveals it to others? Is God playing favorites? Wouldn't God want all of us to know as much as possible about God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit and the Kingdom of Heaven? Yet Jesus says very clearly that God has hidden-- not just failed to reveal, but affirmatively hidden-- something from the wise and learned. So does God have something against the "wise and learned"? I don't profess to know that answer to these questions completely, becasue that would mean that I understand the mind of God, which we can't do. But let's start with the premise that God loves us. That is the nature of God as we understand God, after all. That means that God wants what is best for us. So whatever God does is done from the perspective and with the intention of accomplishing in us what serves us best. That leads us to exploring the question of why it would be best for the "wise and learned" to have something hidden from them. And while the antecedent for "these things" isn't completely clear, it seems very likely that what Jesus is talking about is the fact that He is the revelation of God. So why hide that from the "wise and learned"? Maybe the answer is found at the very beginning of the human story, in the passages in Genesis about the Garden of Eden. What was it that God told Adam and Eve not to eat? The fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. So how did the devil weaponize that prohibition and get Adam and Evil to violate it? By saying that if they ate the fruit of that tree they would be like God, knowing good and evil. The devil played on our basic human weakness-- that we want to get beyond ourselves, that we forget that we are creatures and not the creator, that we want to be "like God," that we want to be in charge (perhaps that is the inevitable downside of free will). Maybe God doesn't reveal the mystery of Jesus to the "wise and learned" because they couldn't handle it. Maybe being people of knowledge and learning would cause them to think they had figured out the mystery, and figured out God, making them think they were "like God." We would feel pretty smug, wouldn't we, if we thought we were able to understand the Divine. Why, if we could do that, we'd be on His level. That's the risk, and perhaps God knew that the risk was too great. So God chose to reveal Jesus to the "childlike," those who trust not in their own widsom and learning but in God. Maybe people like that can handle a mystery that the wise and learned can't. Of course, there are a lot of speculations in this discussion, but I suppose that's necessary, given that we are talking about the mind of God. But if I'm on the right track at all, there is one conclusion that seems true: we won't find God by employing wisdom and learning; we will only find God by letting God lead us to Him, as little children are led. In fact, if we rely on our wisdom and knowledge to understand God, we're getting dangerously close to the sin of our first parents. Now I don't mean we should never use our brains. God did give us them, after all. So we shouldn't believe whatever silliness comes our way. But in the end our faith is about trusting God's self-revelation in Jesus, rather than in trusting our logic. Those of us who tend to live in our brains, rather than our hearts, might keep that in mind.