General Audience at Saint Peter's
Square on Wednesday, 18 March 2015.
Dear Brothers and
Sisters, Good morning,
After reviewing the various members of the family — mother, father,
children, siblings, grandparents —, I would like to conclude this first group
of catecheses on the family by speaking about children. I will do so in two
phases: today I will focus on the great gift that children are for humanity —
it is true they are a great gift for humanity, but also really excluded because
they are not even allowed to be born — and the next time I shall focus on
several wounds that unfortunately harm childhood. Who come to mind are the many
children I met during my recent journey to Asia: full of life, of enthusiasm,
and, on the other hand, I see that in the world, many of them live in unworthy
conditions.... In fact, from the way children are treated society can be judged,
not only morally but also sociologically, whether it is a liberal society or a
society enslaved by international interests.
First of all children remind us that
we all, in the first years of life, were completely dependent upon the care and
benevolence of others. The Son of God was not spared this stage. It is the
mystery that we contemplate every year at Christmas. The Nativity Scene is the
icon which communicates this reality in the simplest and most direct way. It is
curious: God has no difficulty in making Himself understood by children, and
children have no difficulty in understanding God. It is not by chance that in
the Gospel there are several very beautiful and powerful words of Jesus
regarding the “little ones”. This term, “babes”, refers to all the people who
depend on the help of others, and to children in particular. For example, Jesus
says: “I thank thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hidden
these things from the wise and understanding, and revealed them to babes” (Mt
11:25). And again: “See that you do not despise one of these little ones: for I
tell you that in heaven their angels always behold the face of my Father who is
in heaven” (Mt 18:10).
Thus, children are in and of
themselves a treasure for humanity and also for the Church, for they constantly
evoke that necessary condition for entering the Kingdom of God: that of not
considering ourselves self-sufficient, but in need of help, of love, of
forgiveness. We all are in need of help, of love and of forgiveness! Children
remind us of another beautiful thing: they remind us that we are always sons
and daughters. Even if one becomes an adult, or an elderly person, even if one
becomes a parent, if one occupies a position of responsibility, underneath all
of this is still the identity of a child. We are all sons and daughters. And
this always brings us back to the fact that we did not give ourselves life but
that we received it. The great gift of life is the first gift that we received.
Sometimes in life we risk forgetting about this, as if we were the masters of
our existence, and instead we are fundamentally dependent. In reality, it is a
motive of great joy to feel at every stage of life, in every situation, in
every social condition, that we are and we remain sons and daughters. This is
the main message that children give us, by their very presence: simply by their
presence they remind us that each and every one of us is a son or daughter.
But there are so many gifts, so many
riches that children bring to humanity. I shall mention only a few.
They bring their way of seeing
reality, with a trusting and pure gaze. A child has spontaneous trust in his
father and mother; he has spontaneous trust in God, in Jesus, in Our Lady. At
the same time, his interior gaze is pure, not yet tainted by malice, by
duplicity, by the “incrustations” of life which harden the heart. We know that
children are also marked by original sin, that they are selfish, but they
preserve purity, and interior simplicity. But children are not diplomats: they
say what they feel, say what they see, directly. And so often they put their
parents in difficulty, saying in front of other people: “I don’t like this
because it is ugly”. But children say what they see, they are not two-faced,
they have not yet learned that science of duplicity that we adults have
unfortunately learned.
Furthermore, children — in their
interior simplicity — bring with them the capacity to receive and give
tenderness. Tenderness is having a heart “of flesh” and not “of stone”, as the
Bible says (cf. Ezek 36:26). Tenderness is also poetry: it is “feeling” things
and events, not treating them as mere objects, only to use them, because they
are useful....
Children have the capacity to smile
and to cry. Some, when I pick them up to embrace them, smile; others see me
dressed in white and think I am a doctor and that I am going to vaccinate them,
and they cry... spontaneously! Children are like this: they smile and cry, two
things which are often “stifled” in grown-ups, we are no longer capable.... So
often our smile becomes a cardboard smile, fixed, a smile that is not natural,
even an artificial smile, like a clown. Children smile spontaneously and cry
spontaneously. It always depends on the heart, and often our heart is blocked
and loses this capacity to smile, to cry. So children can teach us how to smile
and cry again. But we must ask ourselves: do I smile spontaneously, frankly,
with love or is my smile artificial? Do I still cry or have I lost the capacity
to cry? These are two very human questions that children teach us.
For all these reasons Jesus invited
his disciples to “become like children”, because “the Kingdom of God belongs to
those who are like them” (cf. Mt 18:3; Mk 10:14).
Dear brothers and sisters, children
bring life, cheerfulness, hope, also troubles. But such is life. Certainly,
they also bring worries and sometimes many problems; but better a society with
these worries and these problems, than a sad, grey society because it is
without children! When we see that the birth rate of a society is barely one
percent, we can say that this society is sad, it is grey because it has no
children.
Special greetings
I greet the English-speaking
pilgrims and visitors taking part in today’s Audience, including those from
Great Britain, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, the Philippines, Canada and the United
States of America. Upon all of you, and your families, I invoke an abundance of
joy and peace in the Lord Jesus. God bless you all!
To all I hope that their visit to
the Eternal City may be an occasion to rediscover the faith and to grow in
charity.
I address a special thought to young
people, to the sick and to newlyweds. Tomorrow we shall be celebrating the
Solemnity of St Joseph, Patron of the Universal Church. Dear young people, look
to him as an example of a humble and discrete life; dear sick people, carry the
cross with Jesus’ putative father’s attitude of silence and prayer; and you,
dear newlyweds, build your family on the same love that bound Joseph to the
Virgin Mary.
