To become like children

“I give praise to you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for although you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned you have revealed them to little ones.” God loves children. Jesus complains to his apostles: “Let the children come to me.” It is easy for children to believe in miracles and angels. When we grow up we lose our capacity for the spiritual things. This is why Jesus reminds us that unless we become like children, we cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. We need to recover the ability to connect with the supernatural, the faith to believe in the other life. Eternity has a small door and we need to diminish to find it and to go through. Our ego is too big to fit in. What are children like? I’ll point out four characteristics that I like in them: humility, simplicity, sincerity and actuality. All these virtues are very important for our spiritual life.

Humility. Children are little and they know it. They don’t need to pretend, to show off. Their small stature is always before them. They look up to you, try to climb up things, fall down, mess up, dirty nappies, cry for help. They are helpless. They want to grow up, to become bigger, to dream; they are curious, have a huge capacity to wonder, they hope. All these things help us to see God as a Father and trust in him. We are weak and we need God.

Simplicity. People love children because they are transparent: what you see is what you get. They don’t know how to deceive. You can read their minds by looking at their faces. They are innocent, naive, authentic. Whatever they think, they say it. You know where you stand with them. They cry when they are hurt and laugh if they are happy. We spend our whole life hiding our feelings, trying not to say what we think, to pretend we are somebody else. We are very good at deceiving. We can have a number of different lives. We act differently in front of different people. God knows us inside out, perfectly, and he loves us in the way we are. We don’t need to pretend with him. The first thing he tells us when we approach him is: get rid of your fancy dress. We can relax with him.

Sincerity. Little children don’t know how to lie. They haven’t learned yet the art of deceiving. They say that the difference between computers and people is that computers cannot lie. Children are easy to catch: they invent unbelievable lies. Mum knows when her children lie; she was there at the first lie and she knows when we lie: we don’t look at her face, we move our ears, we twitch our nose, we frown. What’s the point of trying to deceive God?

Actuality. I don’t know how to name this virtue: the art of living in the present time. Children do it naturally. They just play. They don’t care about the past; it doesn’t exist. They don’t think about the future; it is in their parents hands. They move from a smiling to crying in seconds. They can laugh with tears still running down their cheeks. Scripture says that God plays with the children of men. All we need to do is play with him. We don’t need to worry about the past: we have been to confession. Our future is in God’s hands, who is a good loving Father.

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