NOTES for Luk 18:16-17

People often cannot understand Christ's call to become like infants, to try to be like children, 'for to such belongs the Kingdom of God,' as today's reading tells us. What does this mean, they say, if children not only lack the proper measure of reason, but also do not know sacrificial love? Their love is selfish, and only as people grow up, and not all people even then, do they master this most difficult art of loving without receiving anything in return. As often happens, in our lack of understanding the apostle Paul comes to our aid. His letters do not at all imply that one should blindly try to become like infants. On the contrary, somewhere he speaks negatively of our infancy: 'When I was a child, I spoke like a child, thought like a child, reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish things' (1 Cor. 13:11) or, for example,1 Cor. 3:1,Eph. 4:14,Heb. 5:13. At first this appears to contradict the call of Christ. But another text from the apostle gives the key: 'Brothers, do not be children in your thinking; be infants in evil, but in your thinking be mature' (1 Cor. 14:20). This, then, is what Christ speaks about: that we should perceive evil like infants, just as defenselessly, just as having nothing in common with it. 'He is still an unspoiled person,' people say in such cases, and the Lord calls us to this unspoiled perception of the world.