Little children are almost always loveable. We coddle them and they enjoy it. Their smiles, especially when directed at us, would brighten the humdrum of daily existence. We throw them up in the air and they trust that they would end up in our arms. They laugh when we make silly faces and we are amazed even at their most routine movements.
There are times when parents have to prepare milk at unholy hours but the sacrifices are compensated when they see the child soundly asleep. We do not see children as unnecessary weight when we carry them to plazas and malls. For parents, the idea of being co-creators with God is too abstract and even metaphysical until their first child is born. The world is never the same upon the arrival of the firstborn.
Parents would lovingly argue whether the first word uttered is mama or papa. Every baby step as they learn to walk is spotlighted. The baby then grows and asks questions like “Why is the sea salty?” or “Why is it dark when I go to sleep and bright when I wake up?” Parents try to answer them without showing any annoyance.
This is not to romanticize children. There are times when they are pain in the ass like when they display tantrums. But parents are consoled by the thought that they are still corrigible.
We love watching them grow. But only up to a certain point. In fact, it is common for parents to plead, “Don’t grow up so fast!”
But time comes when the child has the capacity to reason and passive obedience is no longer guaranteed. There are times when this now young adult would openly disagree with the elders. Parents sometimes feel that their sacrifices have not been reciprocated. They find it difficult to agree with the Lebanese-American poet Kahlil Gibran’s words that children “… come through you but not from you. And though they are with you, they belong not to you. You may give them your love but not your thoughts, for they have their own thoughts… You may strive to be like them. But seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backwards nor tarries with yesterday.”
These ruminations about children becoming adults are triggered by another successful fiesta of the Santo Niño. We have fallen in love with the Santo Niño and we feel that the Santo Niño has also shown his love.
This is not to dampen our affection for this Holy Child but let us not forget that he eventually became an adult. The Bible summarily says about his maturation process, “Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favour with God and humans.”
When he became an adult, he would live a highly unconventional and radical lifestyle. He became an itinerant preacher who often ate together with those whom society considered sinners. His teachings often deviated from conventional wisdom. In a society where material wealth is seen as a sign of divine approval, he proclaimed that it is easier for a camel to enter into the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the reign of God. His messages conveyed through parables bordered on the scandalous: Can you imagine being told that a person who worked early in the morning should not complain if his salary is the same as the one who worked starting late in the afternoon? No labor union, past or contemporary, can accept this teaching.
In a society where the wealthy were well known while the destitute were nameless, Jesus narrated a parable where the rich is nameless while the poor has a name, Lazarus. Moreover, in the same parable, the rich man is tormented in Hades even though it is never mentioned that his wealth was ill-gotten. His only fault was his insensitivity to the plight of the poor. In a society which was highly patriarchal, the adult Jesus had female disciples who followed him wherever he would go.
In the end, he suffered a humiliating death as a rebel. Even most of his friends abandoned him.
The Santo Niño is no doubt adorable. But he grew up into an adult. Do we accept the message of the adult Jesus as fervently as we have adored the loveable Santo Niño?