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Unless you change and become like little children, you shall never enter the Kingdom of heaven (Mt 18:3)
“What does it mean to have the heart of a child? A child is utterly trusting …. A child is totally open, uninhibited, simple, direct, and unless given fear by his elders, unafraid. A child believes without reservation. Every morning after Communion, I go to the Infant of Prague. I say but two sentences: “Give me the heart of a child. Give me the awesome courage to live what it demands.”
(Catherine Doherty, Dearly Beloved, vol. 2, p. 216)
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So, what does it mean to have the heart of a child? What does that look like? Let’s look at some of Catherine’s other writings and some related stories.
In this first excerpt, we see that children are open, simple and direct. Their eyes are not on themselves but on the one they love and trust.
Before I joined Madonna House, I was a kindergarten teacher. One Sunday, at the sign of peace, I turned around and saw one of my five-year-old students standing there, looking up at me with arms wide open and a radiant smile. It was the image of openness that Catherine was talking about.
Let’s look at another quote from Catherine: “If I were really given over to the will of God totally, then I would fear nothing and I would be totally free. I wouldn’t need any defenses, any weapons, any psychological coping devices. What for? In everything that happened to me I would say: ‘Such is God’s pleasure.’ I would accept whatever comes.” (Poustinia, p. 132)
There was a time in my life when I suffered from sleeplessness because the Lord was healing me from a trauma. None of the medications I tried helped me. I had to throw myself at the Lord’s mercy and ask him how to carry on. What I heard in my heart was, “What if I didn’t give you sleep, but gave you love instead?”
This word rang true and pierced my heart. I could not sleep because this place in my heart needed love.
The Lord was asking me to be defenseless with my Madonna House family, to drink in their love so that I could carry on and be healed. He was teaching me to have the heart of a child.
Children live in the moment. Catherine says: “The duty of the moment is the duty of God. I understood that anything done for him is glamorous, exciting, wondrous—if only we can see it for what it truly is!”
She goes on to say that pain will always be with us, that it is part of the human condition. But with prayer, everything we do is transformed. (Dearly Beloved, vol. 3, pp. 111-112)
Again, when I was teaching kindergarten, one of my students had leukemia. She would be away for chemotherapy for six weeks, and then return to school. She lost her hair, but other than that, she acted like all of the other students: she played freely, laughed, and ate with the others. Apart from her hair, you wouldn’t know that she was sick.
She lived in the moment. And because she did, the happy times at school were indeed happy. (By the way, she went into remission, thanks be to God.)
If you watch children at play, you will see that every moment is of vital importance. If all is well, the joy is sweet and faces radiant. If they get hurt or something difficult happens, it’s a tragedy. They are living in the moment, with hearts opened wide.
Finally, children are confident in the love and protection of their father.
Catherine says: “Hold the hand of the Lord, and talk to him anytime you wish …. Quietly and slowly, we begin to understand what he is saying, and our lives begin to change. Everything becomes different. We listen and listen. God’s words pass through our brains and into our innermost selves. We begin to know what it means to belong to God and to love him, to be his very own.” (Soul of my Soul, pp. 17-18)
There was a time in my life when I was struggling with not being able to be quiet inside, and I was ashamed of this. I was convinced that the Father was not pleased with me. I would force myself to sit in the chapel, even just for a few minutes as a way of exercising my faith and facing my poverty.
Finally, after what seemed like a very long time, the Father showed me a facet of my personality that I hated and for which I was blaming him. At the same time, I knew that this thing was also a gift, so I was able to repent of blaming him, and hating myself.
What a joy it was to be still with him and to be confident that I didn’t have to please him in order to be loved! He was and is still teaching me to have the heart of a child.
