Jesus has said in several places in the Gospels that we need to become like children. I’m always trying to get a 
little more understanding of this. Surely He doesn’t want us to become narcissistic, temperamental, or stubborn, as children often are, and there’s nothing in the Gospel that suggests we embrace infantilism or immaturity. Yet whatever He means by it, it is of decisive importance, because “unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven” (Mt. 18:3).
We know that becoming like a child has something to do with humility, for in the next verse Jesus says, “Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven.” I checked to see what one of my favorite Bible commentators, Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis, has to say on the matter, for he has produced a rich and detailed commentary on the Gospel of Matthew entitled, Fire of Mercy, Heart of the Word, though he hasn’t quite finished it yet (he has written two volumes, taking 1600 pages to cover just the first 18 chapters of Matthew; he has recently professed solemn vows in a Trappist monastery [and is known as Br Simeon], and he has told me that he hopes now to be free to work on the third and final volume, which I eagerly await).
What I’d like to do now is share some of his insights on this topic, which can help us gain greater understanding of Jesus’ words. (I will transliterate the words he puts in the original Greek script.)
“The call to turn and ‘become like children’ and, in a moment, the exhortation to ‘humble oneself’ make it clear that Jesus is not here praising a condition of blissful ignorance, torpor, and mere passivity. The attainment of this spiritual state in fact calls for very long and hard work, involving the anguish of self-renunciation, as we see amply demonstrated in the life of St Therese of Lisieux. For a headstrong, self-reliant adult to become interiorly like a child requires an exhausting labor, the demolition of perverse habits, and the healing of illusory turns of mind. Spiritual childhood is a goal to be achieved after long journeying, a dimension to be entered into by the skin of one’s teeth, not a passiveness into which one falls by default.
“Jesus’ call of the child to himself here (proskalesamenos paidon) precisely parallels his earlier solemn call of the twelve apostles to himself at the moment of their first commissioning (proskalesamenos tous dodeka mathetas autou, 10:1). Jesus is at present reminding them of something essential to their condition as disciples: namely, that they did not originally come to him on their own initiative, as they have just now done in order to ask their question [“Who is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven?”], but that he called them to himself when their lives were moving in a quite different direction. ‘We love because he first loved us… In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the expiation for our sins’ (1Jn. 4:19, 10).
“If the disciples are to become vibrant instruments of grace in God’s hands, they have to acquire the malleability of youth, the pliancy of disposition and the gentleness of character that will make it possible for Jesus to use them as he sees fit… The child hears Jesus’ call, comes over to Jesus at once, and allows himself to be handled, disposed of, positioned by Jesus at will. Such alertness and spontaneous obedience and availability to God will, for the disciples, come slowly as a result of a long process of spiritual purification and sanctification…
“This specifically biblical understanding of ‘childhood’ rests on a concrete understanding of the verb straphite, ‘to turn’ (‘unless you turn and become like children’), odd-sounding as it may be in this context. Certainly, it refers to a metaphorical ‘turn’ of attitude or change of outlook; but the word metanoia is normally used in the Gospel to convey this meaning. In the present instance something more immediate and physical must be meant. The ‘turning’ to which Jesus is exhorting should be read in conjunction with Jesus’ call to the child in the previous verse, so that the import of the statement would be: ‘Unless you turn away from your present path and come to me in response to my call, as you have just seen this child do, you will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.’ [emphasis in the original] The verb straphite is actually in the passive voice, so it should be more literally translated as ‘unless you are turned,’ namely, by Jesus, ‘away from your self-directed attitude and path, and toward himself.’ The passive voice here underscores the divine initiative and work in this process: ‘Yield to me and allow me to turn you in whichever way I choose.’ In this sense, spiritual childhood and discipleship are one and the same thing, and such childhood will also mean, paradoxically, that the person who is a ‘child’ interiorly must take up his cross in order to follow Jesus into his Kingdom.
“To come to Jesus, to follow Jesus, necessarily means treading with him the Way of the Cross, all the way to the shame of Calvary Hill (cf. 16:24-25). That is how far spiritual childhood must be situated from a cozy sentimentality. Whoever yields to Jesus’ embrace shall be crucified with him, in order to rise with him to eternal life. The social marginality of the child whom Jesus calls into the midst of the disciples evokes a chief symbolic component of Jesus’ own Passion and death: his ostracism and abandonment by the rest of men…
“It is always the love practiced by the marginalized that redeems the arrogance of those at the center. God loves the humility that positions itself at the outer edge of things. That is where God’s scrutinizing glance instinctively goes when he searches for a just one.
“The disciples were ardently concerned a moment ago about rank within the Kingdom of Heaven. Now Jesus is telling them that, as long as they persist in their present mentality, they will not even enter the Kingdom, much less contend for rank within it! For this Kingdom is a kingdom of children where no one can enter who does not suspend all private projects of self-promotion… we must first unlearn all those encumbering adult habits that fill us with slavish fear and chain us to the earth, all those corrupting tendencies that inhibit the heart from recognizing that God alone is great and that before him we are all children. We must work at making ourselves very small, until the greatest joy of our hearts will be to exclaim to God with boundless trust: ‘Abba! Father!’ (cf. Rom. 8:14-15). Only this password, in the Child Jesus’ mother tongue, will gain us admittance to the Kingdom.”
We now have greater understanding of Jesus’ words. So let us turn and allow ourselves to be turned, so that we can return from our detours and run to God with the joyful abandon of a child who trusts absolutely in his father and finds peace and blessing in his embrace.
