Children

1st Week of Advent - Tuesday (4 December 2018)

Isaiah 11:1-10. Psalm 72:1-17. Luke 10:21-24.

“I bless you, Father, Lord of heaven and of earth, for hiding these things from the learned and the clever and revealing them to little children.”

There is something touching about children. They have their own way of relating to the world around them. They were so one with the womb of their mother; they are so one with her breast. They relate to the world around them with that sense of oneness. It is as if the whole world is their friend.

You can see it sometimes in the way they play, step through puddles, and seem to trust humans and animals alike. Without hesitation they would walk up even to a ferocious animal to pat its shoulder (if only possible). Imagine the scene when a kid meets a dog in the street: she would run towards the dog even when the dog gives her a sharp growl. Children are fearless. They really embrace all life around them. They sit down in the most dangerous places. They eat mud and try to catch the sun and the moon. They trust everyone they meet. They tell us that the world is a safe place, that we are nothing but earth made conscious. Dust and star dust: all one in us!

Jesus must have noticed this attitude, and must have touched him. For him, it was a picture of the ideal world, a world without danger and fear. He said that we should relate to each other as children. He knew from bitter experience that this might be impossible at times, but he asked us to strive after it. This is why he invited us to be like small children in order to be ready for him and God’s reign among us.

At Christmas he presents himself as a child. Soon, as a young man, he will explain what he comes to do among us, what his intentions are. He wants to introduce a new world, a period of grace, the paradise children carry with them in their eyes, hearts, heads, and dreams.

Jesus presents himself as a weak infant, a poor person. While all our life we have been trying not to be weak, and pretending to be strong, here is our God presenting himself as a child, as a lamb, as a person being tempted, as a criminal on the cross. Christianity is the only religion perhaps to dare present God as weak. And nevertheless we've spent 2000 years avoiding vulnerability. St Paul says straight out, “When I am weak, I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:10). But we are afraid of discovering this sort of strength. And yet this is the only kind of power that the gospel offers us.

Today we are called to be children.

We are called to be weak and powerless.