Childlikeness: Our Redemption from Our Downfall

Sunday Gospel Reflection
Feast of the Sto. Niño
January 15, 2023 | Matthew 18:1-5, 10

Childlikeness: Our Redemption from Our Downfall
by Carlo S. Dureza

Today we celebrate children. We express our Catholic faith in rhythmic dances, music, clanging of cymbals and gongs, parades in full color, and prayers of devotion to the Sto. Niño.

The revelry is attributed to the Child whose birth had just been heralded. We very recently welcomed our Savior, the hope of humanity. We continue to celebrate His birth by extolling the significance of childlikeness.

Today’s Gospel gives a glimpse of how our Lord Jesus puts emphasis on children as the model for being the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven. He admonishes us to be like them and to “take their lowly position” in order to be great.

Greatness in our eternal home is what God our Father has planned for us. It is His desire that we enjoy life without end as His children with Him as King, our Father who would care for and serve us all. But sin got in the way: the sin of Pride!

The sin of pride which is a willing refusal out of our free will to go against the kingship of God is contradictory to the childlikeness we should have. Sadly, this caused our downfall. We want the wisdom of the world that we may be “great”, so we defy God and obtain worldly knowledge, the false greatness we aspire in exchange of the grace of genuine childlikeness which would have made us unblemished, whole, humble—like “angels in heaven who always see the face of the heavenly Father”.

We are stained now. The only way to enter heaven, the kingdom the Father prepared for us from the beginning, is to strive to become like children, humble, fully trusting in, dependent on, and submissive to the will of the Father that we could shun deceit and pride. Only then would we claim our redemption in Jesus Christ.

In living in today’s crooked and wayward world, let us do our best to place ambition, wealth, rivalry, and conceit at the backseat and replace these with a child’s characteristics.

Viva Pít Señor Sto. Niño!!

Happy Sunday! Godbless! 😃❤

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