Child

Have you ever noticed how children imitate their parents? 

Saint Therese of Lisieux

In The Way at 870, Saint Josemaria wrote, “Don't try to be grown-up. A child, always a child, even when you are dying of old age. When a child stumbles and falls, nobody is surprised; his father promptly lifts him up. When the person who stumbles and falls is older, the immediate reaction is one of laughter.  Sometimes this first impulse passes and the laughter gives way to pity. But older people have to get up by themselves. Your sad experience of each day is full of stumbles and falls.  What would become of you if you were not continually more of a child? Don't want to be grown-up. Be a child; and when you stumble, may you be lifted by the hand of your Father-God.”

And I have been reflecting on that.  After all, the Saints have always adopted a sort of Spiritual Childhood with God.  They have never been of the mind that they were grown up and independent.

Saint Therese of Lisieux was very happy to remain child-like with God.  She sought special dispensation to join the Carmelites when she was only fifteen years old.  And she sought to allow God to guide her in all things – like a child.  Her child-like innocence meant that she did not spend her time on earth trying to get control of things.  Instead, she simply reflected and prayed.  And she prayed very very hard for people – most particularly for missionaries and priests and sinners.  Once – secretly, she and her sister prayed for a very famous criminal who was going to be put to death for his crimes and was refusing to repent of his crimes and sins and was refusing to receive the Sacraments before he died…  The two girls prayed and decided that they would ask God for a private sign that their prayers had been heard.  At the last moment before his execution (it was reported in the newspapers) the criminal had finally repented and asked to see a priest.  There – in the moments before his death he confessed his sins and received the sacraments. And the Saint and her sister were overjoyed by this news and considered it a sign from God that their prayers had been heard and this sinner was redeemed…

Have you ever noticed how children imitate their parents?  “Well, the same kind of thing happens to a good son of God. One finds oneself acquiring — without knowing how, or by what means — a marvellous godliness, which enables us to focus events from the supernatural viewpoint of faith; we come to love all men as our Father in Heaven loves them and, what is more important, we become more fervent in our daily efforts to come closer to God. Our wretchedness, I insist, doesn’t matter, because we have the loving arms of our Father God to lift us up.” (Friends of God, 146).

For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.