“And calling to Him a child, He put him in the midst of them, and said, ‘Truly I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven’” (Matthew 18:10)
“In the adult there is a hidden child—an eternal child, something is always becoming, is never completed, and that calls for unceasing care, attention, and fostering. This is the part of personality that wishes to develop and complete itself. But the human being of our time is as far from completion as heaven is from the earth.” (C.G. Jung, Psychological Reflections)
The hidden child within each of us goes on in search of fulfillment of what are clearly affirmations of those elements in experience that verify his or her instinctive awareness of the good, right, enjoyable, happy discoveries in the world outside of himself. That happens throughout our lifetime. They even continue beyond death, as St. Gregory of Nyssa insists. It is the essence of hope. Those who aid in the quest are trustworthy and positive influences. When in subsequent settings they display consistency, they become divine agents. Parents ought to fulfill that function as should teachers, pastors and other authority figures. Even when they correct, discipline and deny, the child—if he or she has formed a relationship of trust—will stand corrected. And when he meets those who are opposed to his growth, development and ego enhancement, he will be able to deal with them as negative characters, learning from them the true nature of the world.
But for the eternal child, all life is an adventure. Every confrontation with the world outside teaches, modifies, contradicts and eventually assimilates the learning process that he or she takes through death and into the life beyond. Our purpose as Orthodox Christians is to make love happen in every situation. Throughout our lives, we shall be placed in constant relationships with other human beings. Some of them will treat us as mere objects, and we them. How often do we check out our purchases at the store counter, pass others at our offices, work places or schools, order a meal, get on or off a bus or train, and pay no attention to the functionaries who serve us? And yet we have dozens of opportunities in each situation to sense the presence of another living person and connect in some way with a smile from our lips or our eyes.
Early Christians and true Christians through the centuries were identified as those who did more than pass through life as objects encountering other living objects without paying much attention to them. “See the Christians how they love one another” was more than a cliché. We might say something similar in several meaningful ways. If we look for the hidden child in every person we encounter, we might help him or her to visit again what he had been before adulthood settled in like a lingering disease of the soul. We speak of looking for Christ in each person, because each human being carries the image of God, even if it is too often hidden so deeply that the bearer has long lost the will to recover it, if he or she ever had such a thought.
How many people do you know who are dissatisfied with life and don’t know why? Like the writer of Ecclesiastes, he or she tried everything. They have enough money, surely they have too much “stuff,” they’ve been on various vacations and seen many sights, but something is not right. They blame it on many things, but none of it matters. They lose their way in life, and they do not understand that the route leads to the heart. How tragic the death of those who never find the purpose and meaning of life.