Friends,
in our Gospel for today, Jesus proposes that the kingdom of heaven
belongs to those who are like children. Why? For starters, children
don’t know how to dissemble, how to be one way and act another. They are
what they are; they act in accordance with their deepest nature. “Kids
say the darndest things,” because they don’t know how to hide the truth
of their reactions.
In
this, they are like stars or flowers or animals, things that are what
they are, unambiguously, uncomplicatedly. They are in accord with God’s
deepest intentions for them.
To
say it another way, they haven’t yet learned how to look at themselves.
Why can a child immerse himself so eagerly and thoroughly in what he is
doing? Why can he find joy in the simplest thing, like pushing a train
around a track or watching a video over and over, or kicking a ball
around? Because he can lose himself; because he is not looking at
himself, not conscious of other people’s reactions, expectations, and
approval.
Mind
you, this childlikeness has nothing to do with being unsophisticated,
unaccomplished, or childish. Thomas Aquinas was one of the most
accomplished men to ever live, the greatest intellectual in the history
of the Church, and one of the subtlest minds in the history of the West.
Yet the terms that were used over and over to describe him were
“childlike” and “innocent.”
Childlikeness
has to do with that rootedness in what God wants us to be. Thomas was
born to be a theologian and a writer, and nothing would get him off of
that beam: neither the critiques of his enemies, nor the blandishments
of his religious superiors, nor the temptations to become a bishop. He
was and remained who
God wanted him to be, and thus he was like a great mountain or a flower
or, indeed, a child.
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