THE LOST SENSE OF CHILDLIKENESS

Our guiding principle may and should be a statement by a modern philosopher: “It is God's will that, in holy wisdom, we reconquer childlikeness” (Rabindranath Tagore).

Pestalozzi was convinced that the greatest misfortune of humankind today is the loss of childlikeness because it renders God's fatherly activity impossible. God cannot educate us unless we are open to him and long to be his children.

If the statement by Pestalozzi is true, we may also reverse it and say: There is no greater blessing for humankind today than the reconquest of a childlike attitude toward God. There is no greater task than to reconquer childlikeness for our modern time.

Whoever lacks a childlike, simple belief in Divine Providence and whoever is not convinced that a kind, fatherly hand directs all world events, is unable to cope with life.

How difficult it is in our day to endure life. We can hardly give people today anything more important than this simple faith, this simple confidence, this simple belief in Divine Providence: “God is a father; God is good.”

The present era is marked by a universal anxiety, which can only be overcome by simple, genuine childlikeness.

The nature of anxiety is some vague feeling of helplessness and defenselessness before a strong, almighty power or a mysterious superpower.

Anxiety is a prime affect. Anxiety has been tied up with the human condition ever since the existence of the “sisters” of anxiety: sin, guilt, death, sorrow, fragility. Ever since the existence of original sin, we may rightly speak of prime anxiety. This prime anxiety turns into a universal anxiety; that is to say, every human being affected by original sin suffers from it. It is also the root affect, that is, the source of innumerable emotions. Just as a tree rises from its roots, many open and disguised feelings rise from anxiety.

People today believe that they have lost the sense of fear. What they have actually lost is not the sense of fear, but of wonder. A tormenting anxiety has taken the place of deficient reverence.

Anxiety is, above all, a symptom of our present age. Therefore, it is a typical inner experience of people today. We all know about it either from our own experience or from other people. We are living in a period of tremendous spiritual and intellectual earthquakes. The social order to which we were accustomed is threatened. Whatever had a firm and definite form yesterday threatens to vanish into nothingness tomorrow. We do not know what the future holds for us. We are absolutely uncertain about the present and the future. Insecurity and anxiety prevail wherever we go.

On the one hand, we should learn to acknowledge joyfully our own helplessness; on the other, we should throw ourselves into the arms of a being who is all-powerful and all-kind. Whoever wants to overcome anxiety will never succeed without becoming a child. Without a simple faith in the heavenly Father we will not accomplish anything.

Psychiatrists tell us that the dreams of adults reflect a deep-seated inner anxiety before the living God. These people have not seen or experienced God as a father.

There are few Catholics who know the meaning of the words, “God is my father.”

God's purpose in allowing people to experience inner insecurity is to show them that security can only be found in perfect childlikeness.

Unless I am bound up in the personal God, life will drive me mad. It is necessary that I rest in God. The more we believe that we can find security through personal efforts and means, the more insecure we become. The more we realize this, the better we understand that childlikeness is the answer to modern problems.

Religion offers us a home, above all, because it reveals God as a father and gives us a mother in Our Lady.

Due to its extreme pride, the world rejects God totally. How could people then be open for childlikeness? The world demands an absolute yes to the interplay of life, and what a proud, self-glorious and desperate yes it is!

People of today are sick, they are titans. They do not want to be childlike. They want to dethrone God and take his place.

We somehow sense that only true, genuine children are able to cope with modern life and its terrific blows without personal harm to themselves. They, and perhaps only they, are able to endure and accept the pressure exerted by the masses, the existence amid mass environment in a world that has become entirely too small. None of us can escape from the influence of a mass mentality, and only childlike people can cope with it without succumbing to it and without losing their identities. It is relatively easy for them, and perhaps only for them, to overcome the new unusual conditions which weigh them down like the unbreakable chains of a slave, and to acquire the true inner freedom of the children of God. They gladly and joyfully rid themselves of the compulsive self-confidence prevalent in our modern time which has assumed titanic dimensions. They neither bow in adoration before the golden calf of our economy, the increasing comfort of living and pleasure nor do they break down when disappointments hit them hard.

By counteracting the absolute insecurity of many people with the deep sense of belonging which we possess, we set a convincing example for our modern time.

A person who walks through life as a simple child may be likened to a tree which feeds many people with its fruit.

It is very detrimental to present-day piety to conceive of masculine piety as an intellectual surrender to God and his cause. Such a surrender generates no strength to serve God. Such a piety does not conquer the world; rather, it breaks down as soon as heavy storms arise. The greatest of all virtues is love (1 Cor 13:13). Intellectual piety does not suffice; our knowledge should always serve and increase our love.

The harder the times, the warmer and more gentle our souls should become toward God. The Holy Spirit must make us children again. We may not reject this warm affection as though it were below the dignity of a mature person.

Simple childlike piety is a most tender, affectionate and loving communication with God. It is original, spontaneous and childlike. Why is it that these spontaneous traits have disappeared from our childlikeness? It might be that our approach is too intellectual. Modern trends might have influenced us too strongly without our wanting it. Perhaps we have practiced too little of what we know. “He who lives by truth, comes out into the light” (Jn 3:21).

We have only one task and that is to love the God of love, to rely on him, and to trust in him. Present-day life gives us many opportunities to detach ourselves from everything and to give our hearts to God. We should really be grateful that we may live in times such as these.

“Our Father, thy kingdom come” (Lk 11:2). How these words sound in our time when people are all too eager to dethrone God, when they just do not know what to make of God, above all, of God as our father, of God as the God of love.

Today's world will only be saved through the greatest degree of selflessness and a profound sacrificial spirit. Childlike love should inspire our sacrificial spirit, just as a sacrificial spirit should flow from childlike love. Ardent childlike love enkindles the greatest degree of selflessness.

Simple childlikeness conquers the world and totally conquers the ego.

We should be careful when we picture the way of childlikeness as the “little way.” This might be misunderstood. It is a little way in as far as it is not complicated, but this does not mean that it is an easy way. It is a way which requires the greatest and utmost selflessness.

We must exemplify genuine childlikeness to the modern world by being perfectly selfless.

If we re-mobilize the prime forces of Christianity, then Christianity will regain a greater formative influence upon our lives. The Holy Spirit's intervention is necessary if this union with God is to grow in us.

Unfortunately, we must admit that we people of today no longer have a real understanding of the greatness and dignity which we possess through grace, that is, through our participation in the divine nature. Therefore, we care little about it, whether we personally or others are concerned. Our interest is almost exclusively directed toward exterior things. We are engulfed and enslaved by this world. Even in our prayer we are too much concerned with this world.

We people of today, whose faith has become weak and anemic, can no longer fully comprehend human nature as an image of God. That is why we are overwhelmed by the confusing trends of the various purely earth-oriented concepts of human nature. Such concepts dominate our minds today and influence world history to an unparalleled degree. We, too, are to blame that the Christian image of the world and of the human person has lost its creative power of formation and appeal. Like many of our contemporaries, we are far too much involved in the things of this world; we are too much in love with ourselves and the world. We have neither the time nor the strength nor even the inclination to direct our gaze trustingly upward to immerse ourselves in the contemplation of the great supernatural realities. We neither know nor love God in the right way. Consequently, we cannot know or love ourselves in a God-pleasing manner.

Grace as a supernatural state makes us ontologically similar to the Blessed Trinity. It also creates an ontological and a mysteriously deep and unspeakably close and ardent union with the Blessed Trinity. This truth cannot penetrate us often or deeply enough.

Since people today know little or nothing at all of this great truth and, above all, since they fail to live in accordance with it, they break down under their inner loneliness, self-isolation and self-destruction. In any case, it is the widespread belief that the greatest problem of our time consists in an alarming lack of love and communal spirit.

Many modern people who have personally experienced a dreadful lack of love and much inner loneliness desperately raise the serious question: “Do you believe that life still has any meaning whatsoever?”

It is only through the infused virtue of love that we can love God as he loves himself. Likewise, it is only through this infused love that we truly possess God. Through this love we embrace God as our father just as he, through grace, embraces us as his children. Through this love we grow in likeness to him until, finally, we will be transformed into his image and see him face to face (cf. 2 Cor 4:4; 3:18).

Should we not earnestly try to capture and love the ideal of childlikeness and embody and radiate it to our present-day world? I would like to change the words of a poet a little:

We are living in this world to make it brighter and lighter every day!

Indeed, the sun of childlikeness should shine ever more brightly, it should penetrate us and emanate from us into the world! May I add another thought?

We are living in this world to make it warmer every day!

Not only the brightness but also the warmth of childlikeness should emanate more and more from us into the world. How much love is reflected in these words, “childlike love for the heavenly Father.” I would like to add a third expression.

We are living in this world to make it more divine, more heavenly every day!

Childlikeness, as we interpret it, is something divine. It may take a while for us even to sense a little of the entire greatness and the immeasurable richness of the world which we, as images of the God-Man, possess by sharing in the divine life of the Blessed Trinity. The Triune God dwells within us and, in a similar way, we may and should live in him. He takes pleasure in living among us human beings to the extent that, through grace, he has built for himself a magnificent temple in our hearts. In the same way, it should be our delight to communicate tenderly with him who dwells within us as our divine partner of love, who ardently longs for our love in return, and who has given us a new, supernatural power to love.

The harder the times, the warmer and gentler our souls should become toward God. The Holy Spirit should make us children again. We will not accomplish this by our personal efforts. We must fold our hands so that we may draw the Holy Spirit down upon us. We who seek inner riches are dependent on the Holy Spirit. In simple self-surrender, therefore, we turn to Our Lady that she may ask the Holy Spirit to give us the grace of simple childlikeness. “It is God's will that, in holy wisdom, we reconquer childlikeness.”