The Feast of the Santo Niño on the third Sunday of January is proper to the Philippines by indult from Rome. In a way it is a Filipino extension of the Christmas season, even as it reflects our deeply ingrained love for children, which in the light of the Gospel becomes a medium for our spiritual growth and maturity (Matthew 18:1-5, 10).
The greatest in the kingdom
Life in communion with God is not to be judged according to the world’s category of power and greatness. Greatness in the kingdom of heaven for Jesus is modeled by a child, who in the world of utilitarianism and activism is a picture of uselessness and helplessness. The very helplessness of a child, however, is the precise situation for the divine love and mercy, the human “emptiness” ready to be filled up by God’s munificence. For the true greatness of any human being lies in the unmerited love and care the Creator pours out on humankind. Being ready to receive and grow, as a child images, in what God gives is the road to greatness that lasts forever. In the reign of God, a child is already like a receptacle full as can be of the divine goodness; tragic is when diverted into worldliness this innocence of the child is lost.
The Child is Jesus himself who in the incarnation became one of us. He assumed our neediness as a newborn baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying on a manger (Luke 2:7), with shepherds as His first visitors (2:15), the entire family threatened into flight by the mighty Herod (Matthew 2:13), one who grew “in wisdom and age, and favor before God and before man” (Luke 2:52), and a child destined “to be a sign that will be contradicted” (2:34). He took upon Himself our humanity in obedience to the Father and for love of us. In becoming a child, Jesus in humility and total trust in the Father’s love is now normative to anyone of us wanting to be admitted into communion with God. Our humanity embraced humbly and lived fully in God’s love is our experience of existence in holiness and the promise of eternal fulfillment.
Jesus the child received
“Whoever receives one child such as this in my name receives me” (Matthew 18:5). As Jesus himself was the child received and also rejected, any child now received or rejected is an extension of Jesus mediating His transforming commitment to our humanity. As the incarnate Son of God, one with and for us, His own humanity even as a child is the primordial sacrament of our salvation. Anything done to this humanity is done to Him; anything intended for Him must be in relation to and for the humankind He has identified Himself with. Any response to His initiative of saving love is measured by what we do with our own humanity and the humanity of others, that is, with God’s child in each of us.
“Do not despise one of these little ones” (Matthew 18:10). The stare of wide-eyed children wearily walking in search of freedom from war-torn homes, or scavenging in garbage piles, or shivering through the night on a sidewalk, or trembling in the presence of predators who kidnap and victimize them as sex-slaves, apprentice criminals, plain children-for-sale, or cheap, expendable child-labor, painfully tells us that to be a child in our world is particularly to be helpless unless lovingly received. What we willingly and lovingly extend to a child is a measure of our faith, hope and charity, and that is the way for us to the love of God in Christ Jesus.
Alálaong bagá, our celebration of the feast of the Child Jesus today is also our continuing acceptance of the gift of faith shared by Magellan to Rajah Humabon on the latter’s Christian baptism 500 years ago. The image of Santo Niño that changed hands then and ever since treasured by us should symbolize our acceptance of the call of Jesus to become like Him in our humble and total openness to God’s love, as well as our willingness to be responsible for our children as we are for him.
Join me in meditating on the Word of God every Sunday, from 5 to 6 a.m. on DWIZ 882, or by audio streaming on www.dwiz882.com.