What is the first thing to strike you when you look into the eyes of a child? Surely it is the child’s innocence. A child does not dissemble or lie or put on airs. A child simply is a child. In this, the child is like the rest of nature. A flower is what it is, a little dog is what it is, and so too is the child. The child possesses this marvelous ability to be open like a book, to be only what he or she is without wearing a mask or pretending to be what he or she is not. Jesus tells us to put on the spirit of the child if we are to enter into his kingdom (Matthew 18:3). Why does Jesus insist on this teaching: “unless you change and become like children you will not enter the kingdom of heaven?” He insists on this because you have to have the spirit of the child to oppose the spirit of the world which destroys integrity, honesty and goodness..

When Jesus announced to His followers His mission to fulfill God’s will by opposing the spirit of the world, and by being handed over to suffering and death, you could almost feel the tension in the air (Mark 9:31–32). The scene quickly deteriorated into ironic comedy. The disciples not only did not get it, they began to bicker among themselves about who was the greatest in the Lord’s kingdom (Mark 9:34).

But Jesus doesn’t allow the ensuing childishness of his disciples to prevail. Instead, He tells them that true greatness is coextensive with childlikeness. In contrast to their childishness, he urges His followers to be childlike, to be open and receptive like a child. Thus he rescues his followers from their adult foolishness by offering them the image of the child and by calling upon all who would follow Him to become like little children in spirit.

This was a revolutionary doctrine then and it still is today. In Jesus’ day children had no rights. But, Jesus was driving at something deep within our spiritual psyches. He was pointing out the need to strip away appearances as does the unassuming child and to open ourselves up to God’s love. “The child,” it is said, is “the father of the man,” because the spirit of the child liberates the adult from the burdens of prejudice and sin, from the accumulation of bad habits and bad influences, acquired through compromise with the world.

Jesus wants us to be as nakedly open as a child to enter into his kingdom.

Throughout His life, Jesus was criticized and mocked by the “clever” people of His day, the self-righteous people in positions of power who tried to undermine His message of love by quoting and twisting to their advantage minute details of the law. In instance after instances, he exposed their insincerity by showing how they abused their authority as teachers by perverting the spirit of the law to suit their own selfish desires.

It is to the decent people with the spirit of the child, like simple shepherds, that the Lord announced the good news.

Jesus is asking you to awaken to the spirit of the child within.

Thus he says: “unless you become as little children, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven.”

Let us pray:

Lord, help me to develop a childlike simplicity,
To draw closer to you.
Cleanse me of all bias, and prejudice within,
To walk with a pure, and humble heart. Amen,

—Fr. Hugh Duffy