” To recognize one’s nothingness, to expect everything from the good God, as a little child expects everything from his father, is to worry about nothing. (…) To be small is still not to attribute to oneself the virtues that one practices, believing oneself capable of something, but to recognize that the good Lord places this treasure of virtue in the hand of his little child, so that he can use it when he needs it; but it is still God’s treasure. Finally, it is not to be discouraged by one’s faults, because children often fall, but they are too small to do themselves much harm. »
A few weeks before her death in 1897, Sister Thérèse of the Child Jesus and of the Holy Face confided, in her last interviews, the keys to her small way which will then be popularized under the notion of “spiritual childhood”. This spirituality, which marries humility and lofty ambition, infinite desire and abandonment, simplicity and depth, was not born with the 24-year-old Carmelite.
According to historian Sylvie Barnay (1), the theme of spiritual childhood dates back to the 12th century. Cistercian monks are invited to imitate, in spirit, the newborn baby in the crib. It is “to play pious simplicity, to chirp (…) or having fun with the little child Jesus who laughs. In a hagiography, Saint Bernard of Clairvaux is even described as “ the very familiar infant of Notre-Dame “.
In the 13th century, the mendicant orders — Franciscans and Dominicans — sought union with God by becoming spiritually the brothers of the child Jesus. Medieval accounts emphasize the ” littleness of Christ in which God annihilates himself, and the smallness of the spiritual child who resembles him “. In the 15th century, this symbolic theology was embodied in objects. Young girls enter the convent carrying a wax Jesus in a cradle, which will inspire their meditations at Christmas. Devotion to the child Jesus, embodied in this figurine, extends to Spain in the 16th and 17th centuries. These statuettes are installed in the cribs in a miniaturized form – the “santons” or “little saints”. In the 18th century, the wax Jesus now decorated the branches of Christmas trees.
Raising the Soul to God
At the end of the 19th century, we find in the pen of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux the spirit of medieval compositions. In his Autobiographical manuscriptsshe offers herself to the Child Jesus to be his little toy”; she wants “to amuse baby Jesus, to please him “…Childishness? No, these image-symbols are intended to elevate the soul to God. ” But I want to look for the way to go to Heaven by a very straight, very short little way, a very new little waysays the one who was proclaimed a Doctor of the Church in 1997 by John Paul II. Me, I would also like to find an elevator to raise me up to Jesus, because I am too small to climb the rough staircase of perfection. »
It is from the Scriptures that she draws her inspiration: I read these words from the mouth of Eternal Wisdom: If anyone is very small, let him come to me. Indeed, in the Gospels, Jesus “exults with joy” seeing how God reveals himself “ to toddlers »rather than to the wise and learned (Luke 10.21). He scolds his disciples who reject the little ones. ” Let the children come to me, do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to those who are like them”, he said before adding: “Che who does not welcome the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it”. And the evangelist clarifies: He embraced them and blessed them by laying his hands on them (Mark 10,14-16).
Christ does not seek to infantilize the believer, on the contrary, he desires his full human growth and his spiritual enlightenment. This comes through a new birth. ” Unless born from above, one cannot see the kingdom of God he says to Nicodemus (Jn 3,3). The Beatitudes point the way. The poverty in question is synonymousof spiritual childhood : it consists in placing one’s life in the hands of God “, underlined Gustavo Gutiérrez, the Peruvian liberation theologian, in an interview granted to The Cross (2).
Unlike the adult, the toddler spontaneously accesses the presence of God. There is no need to interrupt the din of thoughts, or to create a void, or to detach oneself from the past or the future… The toddler is totally available: he lives serenely, in the present, the absolute dependence on the completely Other who reveals himself to him. “ The meaning of life for the small child seems innatesays Virginie Dhellemmes (3), former head of the International Catholic Child Bureau. It seems that the child feels an evidence of transcendence. »
Why become like little children? ” For nothing, for the joy of being in relationship, answers the philosopher and theologian Lytta Basset (4). It would therefore be to reconnect with this original sense of our earthly existence which seems to be anchored to the body of children: be sent to others. Without necessarily knowing why. Because Someone knows and sends us, Someone who has revealed to us the essential, the “things of the kingdom”, if only once, fleetingly or barely perceptibly. »
Do not reject toddlers, do not look at them from the top of your pseudo-intelligence, learn, following them, to perceive the essential, leads, “even more radically, she completes, to “’receive’ the child that everyone carries within, with the same respect, the same attention, the same receptivity. »
Jesus never asked for become like children again but of become a child. ” The real childhood is therefore in front of us, said Father Paul Houix (5), abbot of the Cistercian monastery of Timadeuc (Morbihan). It is a becoming that is never completed; it is a continual growth. This means that we don’t have to go back to a mythical time when we would have lived in the truth of a childhood that we would have lost and that we would have to find again. […] To enter the Kingdom is precisely to become a child living in simplicity, trust, gentleness under the gaze of the Father. This becoming requires a lot of time, because it actually takes a lifetime. »