Fr. Victor Baltazar, SJ
Feast of the Sto. Niño
January 19, 2020
While the rest of the Catholic Church reflects on the Call of the First Disciples narrated in John 1, 35-39, the Church in the Philippines celebrates “Pit Senyor!,” the Feast of the Christ Child with Matthew’s “Let the children come to me.” Jesus expresses God’s deep love for children who are counted among the most vulnerable members of the People of God, they who do not have a voice or stature or power in the community. And yet Jesus makes it a requisite disposition for membership in the Kingdom “to become like children.” What is it about being “like children” that makes a person disposed for God’s reign?
I guess we can begin with vulnerability and total dependence on God. When the sole power that moves a person is one’s ability to “to ride on” love and be carried by that love to joy, that person is able to experience fullness of life and joy with the least of worldly attachments. Even the most serious concerns are treated as play and life assumes an unbearable lightness.
Second children are most humble and in that humility are able to look at reality quite simply and honestly. We remember the famous Aesop’s fable of “The Emperor’s New Clothes” where the powerful monarch walked around naked and still had all his subjects praise him for his new clothes, until a simple child simply told him the plain truth and asked, “why do you walk around naked?”
Finally, children are quite spontaneous because time and experience are still quite attached to moments and episodes and they are not weighed down by moments of reflection or dilly dallying or beating around the bush. In a sense as quickly as children are hurt, they are also as quick to forgive, perhaps because they do no yet have the luxury of thinking through things, of objectifying them and reflecting on them with questions or prejudice.
While the capacity to reflect gives our human responses the potential for depth, consequence, commitment, the reflective moment can also give occasion to cowardice,to justification and compromise, because reflectiveness can also take away spontaneity and instinctive response. On this feast of the Sto. Niño, let us hear Jesus’ invitation, “Let the Children come to me!” not only as a reminder that we lead our younger members to him (and not block their path by bad modelling or bullying!) but also as an invitation for us to recover that child-likeness: the vulnerability, the honesty and spontaneity, that simple and playful response to a God who loves to be Father to God’s people.