Caring for a Child’s Spiritual Needs (Part 2): WONDER + AWE
“Suffer the Children”/“Let the Children Come Unto Me” by Carl Bloch, 1800s
continued from Caring for a Child’s Spiritual Needs (Part 1): BAPTISM
I sometimes forget how readily children can enter into the spiritual mysteries. It is much easier for children to connect with God than it is for us adults.
Young children are naturally inclined to contemplate the divine. The grace conferred by baptism especially opens this door for them. Their clean and curious souls have an infinite capacity for wonder and awe; they gravitate always toward Him. Children lack so many of our adult obstacles—namely fear, doubt and judgement—and so their eyes, ears, arms and hearts are both receptive to, and in constant pursuit of, Jesus.
Recently, my oldest kids, Max (4yo) and Sienna (2yo), were gifted some great meditation books designed to help draw them into the prayer of the rosary. As we were praying it together, with the aid of the books, this precious conversation took place:
Max: Where's heaven?
Me: Well...not here, not on earth. Heaven is beyond earth—it’s where God and Jesus and Mary and the angels and saints all live.
Max: Yeah! Let's go there someday!
Me: Great idea, son!
Max: We'll prolly have to drive there... But thru hell first... and we'll have to go fast because hell is a mean place with a lot of mean things.
Me: Yes... Will you meet me in heaven someday?
Max: Yeah! And when we get there we can eat with Jesus!
Me: Yes! A big feast!
Max: We should probably bring snacks for the way to heaven... bananas, chocolate, peanut butter cookies...
Me: Are those Jesus' favorite foods?
Max: Yeah, so we must make them to bring. You'll have to get the recipe.
Sienna: (interrupts with a wave and smile) Bye!
Me: Where are you going, Sienna?
Sienna: (runs off. returns a few minutes later with sandals on wrong feet)
Me: Where are you going Sienna?
Sienna: (big smile) I go to heaven. Bye!
Me: Not yet, Sienna, not yet!
And the very next day, at lunch, he randomly blurted out another deep question:
Max: Do I have a purpose?
Me: Yes! To love and serve the Lord—and His other precious children on this earth.
Max: That’s my purpose?
Me: Yes. That’s everyone's purpose. We were made to love and serve God and our fellow human beings, who are God’s other precious children.
Sienna (2yo), while not quite capable of Max’s level of discussion, has her own hunger and love for the divine. She and my son are both quite fascinated with the story and imagery of Christ’s Passion, and also with Jesus’s “owies,” which they like to gently kiss.
In the morning, Sienna will often ask, with a wide-eyed, hopeful smile, “We go to Mass today… yes?” And she throws the occasional fit when we can’t go, or when we can’t say the rosary, right now. I’m always sad when I have to refuse her sweet heart these things, and more than once I’ve wondered if they aren’t nudges from the Holy Spirit, delivered through her.
Even before she turned two, she had a special love and devotion for “Mama Mary.” Without prompting from us, she started kissing Mary statues and images. Every time she sees our outdoor statue of Our Lady of Grace, she will try to pick a blossom or leaf or at least some rocks or wood chips to place in her hands or at her feet.
These precious little moments of faith make my heart sing.
They give me hope that (despite my many failures as a mother) I am helping my children love and chase Jesus, and the wonders of His Kingdom. I want them to know Him, love Him, serve Him. But I also want them to run to Him, to snuggle near His heart when the world—or we, as parents—fail them. I want them to understand that they belong—first, last, always and forever—in His arms, even more than they do in ours.
And it seems to me that it is never too early for us to nurture this love and reverence for God and the things of His Kingdom. The faith can take quick, deep root in the pliable mind and heart of a child, who has not yet lost his or her wide sense of wonder and awe.
For the mysteries of God are, undoubtedly, more accessible to the hungry souls of children than to us willful, worldly, and otherwise spiritually inhibited adults. Perhaps the most common obstacle in a child’s path to Jesus is us adults, who too often prevent and complicate our child’s relationship with Him.
We cannot give to our children what we do not have.
Have we lost our wonder and awe? Have we lost Jesus? Do we give our children the space they crave, the example they need, to love and seek Him? Or have we denied our children—and ourselves—chances to know Him?
Matthew 18:2-6
And calling to him a child, he [Jesus] put him in the midst of them, and said, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.
“Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me; but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened round his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.”
