Niño

Do you remember the first three to four years of your life? Last week, my parents asked me if I remember being bitten by the house dog and getting those injections on the spine for many days. I replied that I remember faintly the smell of the hospital and a little of the pain.

It is strange how we do not have a hold on those critically important early years. We only come to know of that time through pictures and stories. Perhaps, those nascent years are not for us to remember; perhaps those years are really for our parents. They may be the subconscious years of our utter vulnerability and dependence. But for our parents, those are the years of heightened attention and conscious devotion. Those years really belong to them; it is a time when their love deepens and learns again, a few years when priorities are clear, and coming home is a willing obligation, no matter the world.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is a story by F Scott Fitzgerald about a child who is born old and grows to be young over the years. It is a parable that tells us about the grace and surprises of life, about never knowing what’s coming at you, about growing to be who you are, and learning about things that last and things that must die.

Today, the feast of the Sto Niño, is a good time to be curious again, and to be grateful for an eternal God growing young and vulnerable enough to be cradled in our arms.

We have many expectations of this Child. We want him to do old and grownup things. We pray to him to take us out of our debt and misery, or guide us along our fallen paths. Wonder Counselor, Prince of Peace we say, ransom us from this prison of tears. In our devotion, we even reverence this Child as Señor and accord him a special place in our homes.

To someone outside (or even inside) the Christian tradition, this devotion to a Child-God must be a curious thing. How explain this deep faith of our people in a Child who can change us and work miracles in our lives? You do not have to go far to believe in the power of a child to convert us. You only have to hold a child or be held by one.

Of course, this is not to canonize children. They can be as bratty and tiresome as adults jockeying for adulation and attention. In today’s Gospel, we are told that to enter the Kingdom, we must accept it as a child. To receive heaven as a child is to become small again, small enough to need others and poor enough to confess the futility of our attempts at bigness. To receive eternity, one must become like children who readily drench themselves in the grace of the moment (as when at play) and who are rather forgetful of time.

Of course, this is not to demonize grownups. Grownups can be as young and refreshing as children who easily excite over chocolate and storytelling. You do not enter heaven however with a senior citizen’s discount card. To receive heaven as a child is to grow old enough to need others again, and to go slow enough to pray with thankfulness and hope. To enter the Kingdom as a child is to age with grace, long enough to be no longer avaricious and afraid. To receive eternity as a child is to become forgetful enough to hold only the memories that truly matter.

Read a story to a child, or see a movie with one, and you will observe that a child never seems to weary of starting all over again. There is always something new to be found beneath the worn out words and pictures of our lives. There is always something in the story to startle us and fill us with wonder. Tomorrow will be new again. Or in the words of Khaled Hosseini’s “The Kite Runner,” a novel about children and friendship, “there is a way to be good again.”

If you were to ask the Lord about the first three years of his life with us, I suppose he will say he can only now faintly remember. Perhaps he has known those years only through the fragments of our words and stories. Perhaps the early years of the Niño are not for the Niño to remember. Those years are not only for Mary and Joseph and the angels. They are ours as well, the years of heightened attention and conscious devotion, a time when our love begins to deepen and learns to let go.

We are eminently redeemed during those early years, when we grew down to become like children, a wondrous time when life was always new in the morning, and promises and priorities were clear, and when coming home to the Child was a willing obligation, no matter the world.

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