In the process of growing to adulthood, some people are blessed with never losing their spiritual childlikeness. Those who do lose it, will need to regain it. This seems to have happened with Job who at the end of his long ordeal proclaims: I have dealt with things I do not understand, which I cannot know. Therefore, I disown what I have said and repent in dust and ashes. The journey back to spiritual childhood is rarely, if ever, simple or easy. Inevitably, it involves suffering—a suffering, that if not rebelled against, steadily chips away at the heart’s pride. Even the great Saint Thomas Aquinas, at the end of his life, (in a spirit of spiritual childlikeness) spoke of his great philosophical and theological achievements as just so much straw. In striving for the same spiritual childlikeness, let us never forget that it is not wisdom we seek, but He who is Wisdom and in whom alone we come to know the Father. May our Blessed Mother the Seat of Wisdom support us by her prayers and example to find and be transformed by this true Wisdom that is the precious gift to the spiritually childlike.
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