Saint Thomas Aquinas’ dismissal of all his writings as “so much straw” after his final mystical experience gives us a glimpse into the joy Jesus expresses in today’s Gospel: “I give you praise, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for although you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned, you have revealed them to little ones.” Jesus makes the same point elsewhere when he insists that unless we become like little children, we will not enter the kingdom of heaven.
It is unlikely that Jesus meant to disparage serious thinking or discourage the disciplined study of the mystery of God. Rather, he is pointing to something deeper: the disposition of heart necessary for receiving divine truth.
One of the striking qualities of a healthy, well‑loved child is the absence of the mental and emotional filters that adults inevitably acquire. A child encounters reality directly, without the layers of interpretation, suspicion, fear, and self‑protection that accumulate with age. Over time, however, we all develop these filters—ways of seeing and interpreting the world that shape, distort, and sometimes even censor our perception of reality, including our perception of God. And because these filters form gradually and unconsciously, we rarely notice their presence.
Any serious spiritual life therefore requires the slow, honest work of identifying the filters through which we perceive and process reality, knowledge, and truth. This is part of what it means to become childlike again: not childish, but purified of the distortions that keep us from encountering God as God truly is.
This work, however, involves more than recognizing our external distortions. It requires facing the interior ones—the false images we hold of ourselves, the illusions we cling to about our own virtue, and the painful truth of our ongoing sinfulness and deep unlikeness to God. This is the domain of self‑knowledge, where we come to see both our poverty and our belovedness. And it is also the domain of prayer, where God gradually reveals himself in deeper and more contemplative ways.
Authentic contemplative prayer emerges only after this long and often arduous purification. It is the fruit of letting go of the filters that keep us trapped in unreality and prevent us from receiving the fullness of Truth. Even sound theology and orthodox doctrine—good and necessary as they are—can become a kind of filter if they remain merely intellectual and never yield to the living encounter with God.
Thomas Aquinas reached this blessed moment near the end of his life. After years of brilliant theological labor, he was granted a revelation so overwhelming that he suddenly saw how small even his greatest insights were in comparison to the reality of God. In that moment, he became one of the “little ones” to whom the Father reveals his true face.
May we, who do not share his extraordinary intellect, imitate his humility. And may we, through the patient and painful work of identifying and removing the filters that distort our vision, come to surrender ourselves to the mystery in which we live, move, and have our being. In doing so, we too may become the little ones who receive the joy of God’s self‑revelation.