the crucified orator 734 reason why) that they decided to ward off with threats those who brought this crowd of children to the holy Teacher: “The disciples rebuked them,” Mark says, while Luke states that “they rebuked them”101 (Lk 18:16). But the merciful Lord, indignant, said to His disciples: “Let the children come to [M]e, do not hinder them; for to such belongs the kingdom of God” (Mk 10:14). What do I hear? My Lord, what do I hear? Will a child enter the Kingdom of Heaven? How so? The Kingdom of Heaven suffers violence. [As] You have said elsewhere: “The violent take it by force” (cf. Mt 11:12). What kind of strength, however, do children have, that they may enter Heaven by force? Unless, perhaps, they acquire Heaven by their tears, which are never lacking to children, and which are more powerful than battering rams. Indeed, it is so. Let us remember what happened to Hagar the Egyptian when Sarah expelled her from Abraham’s house into the desert along with her small child, Ishmael. Namely, on account of their lack of food, she left her son under a tree, so that she may not watch him die. “As she sat opposite him, she wept aloud” (cf. Gen 21:16). “And God heard the voice of the lad” (Gen 21:17), the sacred historian then states. Hence, I am greatly astounded that the sacred writer is inconsistent: For why does he say that the boy’s cry was heard, although he stated that it was not the boy, but the mother who wept? “As she sat opposite him, she wept aloud.” However, he conceals a great mystery here, as was his custom. Hagar was a figure of the penitential soul, for she was grieved by being expelled from the house of her master and husband because of her own impudence and she was dying from hunger in the desert, while at the same time, so many servants lived nicely, even very comfortably, in her master’s home. Hence, her sighs and tears were so efficacious and so tender that they seemed to be those of a child. Therefore, it is rightly said that Hagar wept but the boy was heard, because the persevering penitence trans101 In St. Stanislaus’ Latin Scripture quotations, there is a difference that does not appear in our English translations. In Mark we read “Comminabantur offerentibus,” whereas in Luke we read “increpabant illos.”
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