It only takes about three minutes in a K-12 classroom to learn that children will ask for exactly what they want. “Miss! Can I go to the bathroom?” “Can you come here?” “Can you help me put on my goalie gloves?” “Can I show you my drawing? It’s Godzilla with water guns!”

As a teacher, my students’ transparent requests are tender reminders that I can still serve them. Yet, as an adult, I am unnerved at the thought of being so forthright in asking for my own blessings. I find myself disappearing into the fray after Mass, slithering past the priest with a quick nod and “Thank you, Father!” I don’t want to bother the father, or maybe I don’t like the reminder that I am so wholly dependent on the grace I never worked for nor deserved.

At the beginning of today’s gospel, we read that the children “were brought” to Jesus. They did not get to him on their own. There were invisible, unnamed others who so loved these children that they brought them to love itself.

Similarly, in Seamus Heaney’s poem “Miracle,” he chooses not to profile the man saved from a lifetime of paralysis. Rather, Heaney follows the friends, who, with “shoulders numb” did not “let up” until he was healed. We are these invisible, unnamed others in our story—driving squealing children to Mass, listening to an elderly relative retell the same memory, charitably fielding the questions of a friend interested in becoming Catholic, and yes, joyfully contemplating yet another Godzilla drawing on graph paper.

So, perhaps today’s invitation is to resist the urge to be like the disciples, “rebuking” ourselves when we think we should be more self-sufficient. Let yourself come to him. Let yourself be seen in your need, receive his affirmation, and experience his blessing.