A woman was surprised to see, during a stressful interview with their son’s principal, her dear husband’s face crumple like a child’s, a look of terror appearing there momentarily.  A young professional was equally surprised that, during a tense team meeting, his boss briefly put her thumb in her mouth. What was happening to these mature, competent grown-ups?

Any adult will bump into childish parts of himself. He thinks he’s grown-up, but some immature, irrational little one pops out sometimes, uninvited and unannounced.  Like a child, that little one needs attention and help, and will keep whining, screaming, or acting silly till he gets it.

Even more so, for those who suffer deeply as children—through any of the myriad natural or human-inflicted causes so shattering to little ones, and so alarmingly common even in Church and family life—those who survive are changed.  The shattered self has built-in ways to survive and grow up.  But the grown-up might carry the shattered bits a long time. Until addressed, they can appear, unbidden and unacknowledged, like lost children.

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When Jesus says, “unless you turn and become like children, you will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven,” what does He mean? What are children like?  Some will say innocent, pure, genuine or loving, traits which are more accessible and less tarnished in children than adults.  But what’s common to all children is that they’re small and not fully developed, unable to look after themselves. They’re inescapably dependent and vulnerable.  

As author Sam Leith notes, examining children’s literature across five centuries, fear is a big part of every child’s life.  A child knows well: the world is dangerous and he’s tiny in it.  What does the child need?  Not to be suddenly strong and grown-up, but to be held, as a child is meant to be held.  The adults in his life can’t take away the world’s danger, but can give assurance that no matter what, he’s valued and worth protecting.  The child needs such help to grow and thrive.  A need we all have, which is not always met.

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The world is hard on children.  Some people respond with a resignation that’s really despair: “Let’s not have children, then.” The widespread suffering of children is so normal that we’re often numb to it, and perhaps that’s the most shocking thing.  We might think child sacrifice is from a bygone era or different culture, but would it be difficult to name five ways our own society regularly sacrifices its children?

A man named Peter, grizzled by the time I met him, loved to attend the Catholic church where he’d been baptized in his latter years.  His unfailing prayer was “for all the children in the world, especially in war-torn countries”—children who suffer.  Peter had been a child who suffered.  He still carried that “inner child” within him, formerly with anguish and strange behaviours, now tenderly and with dignity.  As he found healing through church life, he became more adult, better present, and more able to let his “inner child” shine through. Shabby and grey, he was stunningly beautiful.

“Inner child” is an image known, and perceptively developed, in the psychological world—but also long before, back to Oscar Wilde’s Selfish Giant, the Grimm Brothers’ Little Red Riding Hood, and on as far as we can see, even to cast-out baby Moses drifting purposefully in his basket of reeds on the river.  Scripture knows well the child who suffers and has no refuge. Hear Rachel weeping loudly for her children (Jeremiah 31:15), picked up poignantly when, even at Christ’s birth, we’re rent by children’s anguish (Matthew 2:19).  Each liturgical year, during the octave of Christ’s nativity, we commemorate the murder of innocent children.  

How could God’s coming as a child lead to terrible harm to children?  God’s coming doesn’t lead to children’s harm, but does shine a light on this harm happening all round us. The light of Christ leads to calling us to care for children.  It calls us, urgently, beyond our comfortable limits, to care for the vulnerable, who are first of all children.  Not only our “own” children, as if all children weren’t in humanity’s keeping.  Every child, even if that vulnerable, needy child is somewhere in me!

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The Gospel painstakingly shows us, not only that children suffer, although that’s terrible enough.  It reminds us that we cause children to suffer, even within the Church—by which we’re rightly shocked because the Church is first of all for children.  It’s led by a Child.

Can we turn to the Christ-child, and “learn from him, who is gentle and humble in heart”? Can we help each other learn from him who turns as a child to his Abba, inviting us to turn as children to our Abba?  God in Christ is not afraid to be held, to be vulnerable – and to care for the vulnerable first of all – not by inflicting violence but by inflicting care.