Today Jesus speaks with warmth and praise of those who have become his followers.

He remarks, in a prayer he makes to his Father, that it is not the learned and clever, the Scribes and Pharisees, the religious experts, but "the merest children", his disciples, who have been graced with undersanding the secrets of the Kingdom. They are children not only in their lack of learning and sophistication but also in their openness to hear and learn, a virtue lacking in those who regarded themselves as intellectuals. It is a picture of the early Church. It was a grassroots movement which spread most among the lower levels of society and among slaves. It would not be until later that Christianity spread to the higher echelons and became the faith also of the ruling elite and the intellectual classes. As Jesus says today, "Yes, Father, for that is what it pleased you to do." In growing and spreading in this way, Christianity showed, first, that it was really the work of God. Second, it was never an exclusive domain of either the political or educated elite. It has appealed and continues to appeal to people at every level of society from intellectual giants like Augustine, Thomas Aquinas and John Henry Newman to the totally illiterate. Both can sit side by side and together hear the Gospel and celebrate the Eucharist.