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| Jesus with Children |
Biblical interpretation of
the Child God
Filipinos are closely attached to the picture of a child. It is explicitly expressed in their devotion to the Niño-child. Almost every Filipino Catholic houses has an image of a Santo Niño. There are many people who questioned and misinterpret the Catholics that they worship a child. The concept of a child is biblically founded and not from any superstitious belief. Filipinos expressed their love for the child-God by devoting themselves a prayer to the child. Child is also a symbol of many things. It is also a reminder for adults to go back and reflect the deepest recesses of a child's attitude and characteristics.
A. The childhood in God
In the Sacred
Scriptures, the four evangelists don’t have a detailed account on the life of
Jesus as a child. The last picture of Jesus as a child was when he was twelve
years old according to the gospel of Luke. We are mystified by this missing
puzzle on the life of Jesus. We wonder what was Jesus like when he was sixteen
or twenty-five years old. As Hans von Balthasar would assert that “the infancy
narratives tell us nothing concerning the child himself.”[1]
However, through
Balthasar’s interpretation we might as well agree with him that we can create a
picture of the childhood of Jesus through his entire life. He might be a grown
adult in the gospels however, we can still picture that he is still a child,
meaning a son of God. Balthasar gave us a concept the “Archetypal Identity”,
which will aide us in understanding a child through the life of Jesus. He means
of “Archetypal Identity” as a unity which by no means is purely “natural”, “physiological”
or “unconscious”[2]:
[A child’s identity is determined] between the child,
an existing and developing reality, and the idea that God has of him, the
intention therefore that God wishes himself and yet not, in so far as it has
the creature for an object.[3]
Balthasar
asserts that a child’s identity is naturally based its dependence on the
mother. There is an inner connection between the mother and the child. In the
physiological development of a child, a child cannot distinguish between
absolute goodness, which is divine, and the creaturely goodness he encounters
in his parents.[4] Thus,
the child is totally dependent of the parents love for him. If the child
becomes more aware of it, he begins to discern about the sphere of the concrete
good.
Thus, with this
kind of identity that is being developed in Jesus as child is also the basis
for his relationship with his father. Jesus cries, “Abba Father!” (Lk 11:13). Jesus
may have grown up as an adult yet he is still dependent to his Father. We can
see it in many instances, as we go along in our discussion.
This we can
assert that the childhood in God is still active and manifested even as an
adult. We must now show the essential traits of the man who lives this
childhood in God as an adult.
B. Traits of the childhood in God
The childhood
in God must not only be viewed literally as the childhood experience of Jesus
Christ. The stories of the presentation in the temple (Lk 2:22-38) and Jesus’
finding in the temple (Lk 2:41-52) are not enough to use it as a basis for our
discussion in identifying a childhood’s trait in God.
The adult
Christ is the most evident Christ himself, since he retained all the traits of
the child of God even as he was entrusted with the difficult, superhuman task
of leading the whole world back home to God.[5]
Balthasar gave
us four traits of Jesus as a Child as an adult. First, is the abiding child; second, the thankful child; third, the
intimate child; and fourth, the calmly child.
i.
The Abiding
child: “The Father is greater than I” Jn 14:28
In the life of
Jesus, all his words and deeds tell us that he abides in looking up to the
Father with eternal childlike amazement: “The
Father is greater than I” (Jn 14:28). Indeed the Father is greater than
anybody else because he is the origin of all things (Gen 1). By this words from
Jesus, we can assume that there would not exist without the Giver.
According to
Balthasar again, this is a comparative, which is a linguistic form for
amazement. However, this amazement of Jesus is not merely human but derived
from the much deeper amazement of the eternal Child, who in absolute Spirit of
Love, marvels at Love itself as it permeates and transcends all that is.
Jesus said, “…not as I will, but as you will” (Mt 26:39)
in his agony in the Garden
of Gethsamane
Moreover,“Abba Father!” (Mk 14:36) as cried out
by Jesus tells of a kind of relationship that it between the Father and Jesus
as the Son. In human sociology, identity of Father is like a giver and when a
child asks something from his Father it gives the child a confidence. A kind of
confidence the child’s request will not be rejected. This relationship is
taught to us when Jesus taught his disciples about the Lord’s Prayer (Mt
6:9-14).
ii.
The Thankful
child: “Father, I thank you for having heard me.” (Jn 11:41)
The second
trait of a child God projected to us by Jesus is being a thankful child. Jesus
was thankful after his prayer was heard when he was able to raise Lazarus from
the grave (Jn 11:1-44). We also have the same words of thanksgiving from the
multiplication of the loaves (Mk 6:41-44), The Lord’s Supper (Mk 14:23; Mt
16:27; Lk 22:17). As it seemly appears in the last supper, we remember the word
“Eucharistia” which is a Greek word
for thanksgiving. That’s why in the early Christian community Eucharistic
celebration a thanksgiving to the Father.
As Balthasar
used the example of the dependence of a child, he asserts,
To be a child means to owe one’s existence to another,
and even in our adult life we never quite reach the point where we no longer
have to give thanks for being the person we are.[6]
This means that we never outgrow or condition
of being children, nor do therefore outgrow the obligation to give thanks to
ourselves or to continue to ask for our being.
It
is then a life long awareness of being a child and having the trait of always
asking and giving thanks for things. As Jesus said about the answers to prayers,
“Ask and it will be given to you” (Mt
7:7).
Moreover,
when children ask for something, they always do so in emphatic ways and they
are always ready to give and offer the necessary things just to provide them
for what they need.
Thus,
like the actions of the adult they divulge into devotions in order for God to
answer their prayers. Likewise, in Cebu , they
turn or go to the Sto. Niño to ask for help and that he may grant their
prayers.
iii. The intimate child: “For one alone is your
Father: the Father in heaven”, and “One is your Teacher, Christ” (Mt 23:8-10)
The third
reality which the childlike attitude of Christian life keeps alive is the
intimate character of the Church as mystery.[7]
There is a sense of brotherhood among the Church. This intimate relationship
was shown to us by Jesus, “You have but
one teacher, and you are all brothers; you have but one Father in heaven.” (Mt
23:8-10) We are all brothers because we only have one Father, who is in
heaven.
This is the
childlike receptivity, wherein he accepts that we are created out of the
Father’s love. We are all one and the same. Our neighbor is our brothers and
sisters. And, as God commanded us, “love
your neighbor as yourself” (Mk 12:31). Then, love your brothers and
sisters.
“Only in the light of the docility and obedience of
the eternal Son can the Christian defend himself against the charge that he is
treated as a minor in his Church. And it is also with this reference that we
must overcome the perennial temptation to confuse the brotherhood of the Church
with worldly democracy.”[8]
Balthasar means
here that the intimate brotherhood in the Church will only be destroyed if
allow ourselves attached ourselves too much to worldly democracy. The childhood
relationship between God and his children will be at risk if others think and
act that they are treated as nobody in the Church.
iv.
The calmly
child: “buy up the time” (Col
A fourth and the
last trait, the child has time to take time as it comes, one day at a time,
calmly without advance planning or greedy hoarding of time. Time to play and
time to sleep. He knows nothing of appointment books in which every moment has
already been sold in advance. When Paul exhorts “buy up time” (Col 4:5) he probably means the opposite that we
ought not to squander hours and days like cheap merchandise but that we should
live the time that is given us now, an all its fullness. However, the point
here is neither to “Enjoy it to the full” nor “to make the most of it”, but
only that we should receive with gratitude the full cup that is handed to us.[9]
That is why the
child is not afraid at the fleetingness of the present moment: stopping to
consider it would hinder us from accepting the moment in its fullness, would
keep us from buying up time.
Play is possible
only within times to so conceive. And also the unresisting welcome we give to
sleep. A child that knows God can find him at every moment because every moment
opens up for him and shows him the very ground of time.
C.
Unless you
become like a child (Mk 10:15)
By
becoming then of God’s child is accomplished in our emphatic earnestness even
though an “adult” already. It can then be accomplished only by virtue of the
childlike stance of the God-Man and within the childlike faith of his bride,
the Church.
Jesus
had perfectly showed it to us that no one will enter the kingdom of God kingdom of God
If we
are asked how someone can be a child yet an adult, then, the answers are
already given above.
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