The Presence of the Child

Has it ever struck us that God’s ways with human beings in the Bible begin with an ancient man and a sterile old woman who laughs out loud at the idea that she will have a child? That the Old Testament contains hardly any children, and is filled instead with wise, experienced, and capable men—and that these millennial ways of God lead, at the so called “end of times”, to a child? A child in whom God himself finally turns up and shows himself on earth; who, while himself still a young man—he never made it past youth—loved children and set them up as an example; who died as a juvenis before he reached the forty years that, according to the Romans, were necessary for manhood? How was it Christianity that first really discovered woman, unlike the Jews and Gentiles, and, with woman, the child? Italy may seem over-full of Madonna-and-Child scenes for our taste. That kind of Christianity may appear all too simple and incomplete to us (although there is no lack of Crucifixions there, either). Maybe, however, if we are going to spread the Christian spirit around the globe, we should raise the banner of the child rather than parading the sign of the Cross.

For the grown-up man of the Old Testament, God himself was the Ancient of Days. Yahweh has no child’s features. The Old Testament was a covenant between adults who were perfectly aware of what they were doing when they promised mutual fidelity. It’s practically a unique exception, and it almost has the ring of romantic yearning for some lost golden age, for an inaccessible paradise, when Hosea says “When Israel was still a child, I loved him” (Hos 11:1). That the child should be a present reality, a paradigm for existence, is unthinkable. And yet, it already slumbers under Zion’s heart. It gently makes its presence felt in the piety of the Psalms when they long to surrender themselves into God’s arms to be sheltered in his bosom, to nurse at his breast.

O Lord, my heart is not haughty, nor are my eyes proud. I do not walk on the heights, nor do I seek after what is too lofty for me. No, I keep my soul satisfied and still like a child at its mother’s breast. My soul is like a child who has had its fill. Israel, wait on the Lord, now and forever. (Ps 131)

This image calls out from its depths to become truth. It can become truth where the countenance of the child flashes out from the bosom of the Ancient of Days. Where the pais theou, the servant of God, becomes the pais theou in the sense of the child of God. Christmas sets our picture of God in motion. The ancient Father becomes the God who eternally begets and gives birth. The enigmatic oracle rises to an eternal meaning: “Thou art my child, this day I have begotten thee” (Ps 2:7). Childhood is now no longer merely human; it is no longer merely the sign of a pious immaturity; it has become divine, and it will never be superseded. And because God now pours himself into the form of a human destiny unfolding in time, and because he expresses and reveals himself in this destiny as the soul expresses and reveals itself in the body, all the periods and phases of man’s existence now take on a definitive meaning: they are the revelation of God’s being. Neither the Jews nor the Gentiles could make any sense of this. After all, they saw only man (God was invisible). And both regarded childhood primarily, if not exclusively, as a time of preparation for maturity: the time prior to development, the time of learning, the time, too, of idle play, which seems foolish compared with life’s seriousness. How even Augustine, a man of late antiquity, sighs over his childhood! But when God becomes a child, he eternally rehabilitates this part of creation, which now becomes a fully valid expression of the divine being. Indeed, it even becomes a privileged, particularly eloquent expression of his heart and of the spirit of his kingdom: “If you do not become like children, you will not enter into the kingdom of heaven.” God is young: what a novelty! God never gets used to himself. He is eternally springing up, eternally begetting and giving as Father, eternally coming forth and lovingly answering as Son, and eternally circulating in the giving and receiving of love as Spirit. How else could there be eternal life except in this eternally youthful vitality of love? How else could being itself be bliss and beatitude? With time, you can get used to everything: with eternity, you can’t get used to anything. Now, the child still hasn’t gotten used to anything. Every day he sees the world with a new pair of eyes. And that’s why he is still so close to the divine source from which he has sprung.

And we old sinners—every sinner is old, every sinner is weary of existence, and this weariness is always a sign of senescence—we old sinners can become children again, even be re-born, in the eternal Child. A tremendous mystery that only a child can grasp. And the wise, gray Nicodemus asks “How can a man be born when he is already old? Can he, then, go back into his mother’s womb and come forth from it anew?” Jesus answered: “You are a teacher in Israel, and you don’t know this? Don’t be amazed that I have said to you, ‘you must be born again.’ The wind blows where it will. You hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it’s going. So, too, with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” Words from a fairy tale, words seemingly chosen on purpose so that only children understand and believe them. Such supernatural happenings are the most natural thing in God’s world of wonders. Clap three times, “Behold, the old has passed away, the new has come!”

True, the child must die on the Cross. The shepherd must pour out his life for his sheep. The deadly seriousness of Good Friday rules out any childishness; we must be mature and sensible. “My brothers, do not be children in your understanding. Be little children only in wickedness. But in your understanding be mature men!” (1 Cor 14:20).

And yet, what costs adults spiritual effort—to believe where one would be inclined to judge; to hope where one would like to hold and to shape; to surrender in love where one’s talents seemingly indicate dominion—is the easiest, most natural thing in the world for children. For children, faith, hope, and love are hardly virtues. They are the stuff of life itself. The divine child has shown us how to believe, hope, and love. He has enabled us to do it by his own surrender to the Father. The hard part is inventing the radio or the telephone. Using them once they exist is so easy any child can do it. The Christmas child invented Christian faith, hope, and love, and has placed his invention at our disposal. But he has, if you will, taken out a patent on his invention. It bears his trademark. And yet, the royalties we owe him for its use are negligible; we have only to believe, hope, and love in our tum.

Genuine Christians may grow old in body, but they stand out from all others because of their youthful hearts. Let’s examine whether we bear this mark of God on us, whether we let this light shine before men. Let’s examine whether we have faith. The point is not to wonder, superfluously, whether we can muster up enough strength to perform the act of faith. Rather, we should ask ourselves honestly whether or not we want to perceive and hold onto the truth of the faith that God has given us and placed in our hearts. Whether we believe in our faith. Whether we use the stores and provisions that have been laid up for us. It’s so hard for us to realize that there’s anything else in us besides natural talents and abilities that we exploit for our efforts and achievements. Theology speaks with uncomfortable abruptness about infused virtues. Before, the jar was empty, now there’s something inside. Before, it was empty of love, now God has filed it up with love; faith, hope, and love. The whole of Christianity hangs on this abruptness. But it also comes attached with two conditions. First, we must not take credit for God’s gifts, as if we had been capable of them ourselves. Second, we must really use these gifts in us. They aren’t given to us as dead treasures that we deposit in the bank of eternity, but as the talents in the Gospel. We’ve got to trade with them and bring them back with a 100 percent profit.

The miracle of God’s childhood, which is the source of faith, hope, and love in us, remains alive only when we are permanently re-born as God’s children, only when we every day begin anew together with him in the power of God’s eternal youth. Oh, this vision of God and the world, for which nothing ever gets old, but which sees everything ever more newly, every more youthfully, ever more eternally! A vision that our wise, gray time needs more than any other. Science makes you old. Psychology makes you clever and dumb; you get behind everything, you have no more illusions. In the end, being a Christian transcends being a psychologist, for the one and only thing that’s decisive about the Christian necessarily eludes the psychologist; the divine child’s faith, hope, and love.