From the Jan/Feb, 2026 issue of *Touchstone*

Filled with the Savior

by Anthony Esolen

“Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness,” said Jesus, and you will gain earth as well, all the good of those things the Gentiles seek as if contentment could be found in them alone (Matt. 6:33). It is the open secret of human life and of love, a truth that men will do anything rather than acknowledge, since it does not flatter us, nor does it give us a plan of action in the world, which in any case we must treat with caution, or suspicion, or even contempt. For the “world” that Jesus warns us against is not the good earth, the lilies of the field, and sheep browsing the grass. It is not the little circle of family care where children live. It is a world of noise, accomplishment, trade, city-building, conquest, and destruction.

To be filled with that world —where we must live whether we like it or not, and which we ought to try to dedicate to God, to the extent we can —is to leave no room for the kingdom of God. It is to be too large for childhood. Those who accept the kingdom of God, says Jesus, must do so as little children (Matt. 18:3), and that implies not a compact between responsible parties in a business deal, but the complete surrender of the self to God, to be filled with him, since we can bring to him nothing of our own that was not already his before.

The Christian promise is therefore as high above the Muslim promise, or above the therapeutic deistic promise, as the heavens are above the earth. Those promise some thing to be given by God to a person conceived as essentially alien from God, and for those who place their hopes in a therapeutic life to come, the thing given will be comfortable and familiar and rather bathetic, a playground for grown-ups. But the Christian wants what the child who sees Jesus wants: “Only thee,” said Thomas Aquinas, when in a vision God asked him what reward he wanted for having written well of him.

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Anthony Esolen is Distinguished Professor of Humanities at Thales College and the author of over 30 books, including Real Music: A Guide to the Timeless Hymns of the Church (Tan, with a CD), Out of the Ashes: Rebuilding American Culture (Regnery), and The Hundredfold: Songs for the Lord (Ignatius). He has also translated Dante’s Divine Comedy (Random House) and, with his wife Debra, publishes the web magazine Word and Song (anthonyesolen.substack.com). He is a senior editor of Touchstone.

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