Mary Holds the Child

Can it be permitted, that I hold Him? Why do I not burn away at the touch, if it is He? How can my baby, so soft, so weak, so warm and close, be Him? And how can I ever know my child well enough to be a good mother to him, if he is really He? I can’t play peekaboo with Him! But I can’t help playing peekaboo with him – his cute little giggle is irresistible! I know nothing of God – no mortal can know Him. But I know children, and maybe He is become a child so mortals can know Him as - him. And in a way, perhaps, God has always been a child. A child demands that the world be black and white, that things be either good or bad, right or wrong. Adults learn duplicity, compromise, settling for less. A child is hurt and angry every time someone rejects him –adults shrug it off as the way things are. A child believes in the miraculous, the impossible, sees it as surely as he sees the room around him. Adults know that it’s all mundane, as ordinary and earthy as eating, and that only the pragmatic survive. And a child knows nothing of real suffering – even if he experiences it, he doesn’t understand it. But an adult suffers, and knows what it means, and knows he is as helpless as the child, though he strives like a man to fix the problems. And – oh, God! – a child doesn’t know what death is – but an adult does. O my Child, my child, that you will have to learn that lesson! But my God, my God, perhaps You should know what we adults go through, even in that. Yes, Child, You have always been a child. And I wonder, have you come here to grow up? Or will You try to teach us to be children? Will you manage to do both?

© John M. Munzer