In North American society these days, hardly anything is met with greater fear than the prospect of having a child. Birth rates in the United States and Canada are below replacement level, and the abortion rate in both countries continues to climb. The innocent child is regarded as a formidable enemy to worldly success and a comfortable life. 

On the other hand, Sacred Scripture presents the child as a great gift from God. Jesus instructed his followers to “let the little children come to me” (Matthew 19:14). In blessing children, Jesus emphasized their humility, stating that one must become “like unto them” in order to enter the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 18:2-4). 

Consequently, we read in 3 John 1:4: “I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth.” 

Children are held up as a source of immense joy and a model of humility for all. The punishment allotted to those who bring spiritual harm to a child is most severe: “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone hung around his neck, and to be drowned in the depths of the sea” (Matthew 18:6).

That children are a blessing often falls upon deaf ears in the contemporary world. One needs humility, perhaps, in order to perceive the importance that a child’s humility brings to the world. 

St. John Henry Newman, who was not in the least naïve about children, has provided us with insights into the child, proving that one does not need to be a parent in order to observe the special qualities that the child possesses. He noted the “simplicity of a child’s ways and notions, his readiness to believe everything he is told, his artless love, his frank confidence, his confession of helplessness, his ignorance of evil, his inability to conceal his thoughts, his contentment, his prompt forgetfulness of trouble, his admiring without coveting; and, above all, his reverent spirit, looking at all things about him as wonderful, as tokens of the One Invisible, are all evidence of his being ... a visitant in a higher state”.

We look at the child in this way and begin to realize how much we need the qualities he has in our own lives. The child evokes our smile and our admiration. He elicits a hug. When we embrace him, we embrace all that he is. We may wonder, along with Plato, whether children come to us from a better world in order to bring us an important message that we have nearly forgotten. William Wordsworth suggested, like Plato, that children do come from a higher world, “Not in entire forgetfulness, and not in utter nakedness, but trailing clouds of glory from God who is our home.”

We have lost the ability to see that everything in the world is “apparelled in celestial light.” The child refreshes us, rejuvenates us, and restores us to our roots. The child, in a word, humanizes us. The importance of the child can be measured by the gravity of his loss.

Three weeks before Franklin Pierce’s presidential inauguration, he and his wife lost their only surviving son, 11-year-old Benny, in a horrific train accident. The grief they experienced was utterly devastating. It enveloped the White House and effectively destroyed Pierce’s effectiveness as America’s 14th president. History informs us that Franklin Pierce’s raging alcoholism was connected to losing all three of his sons in their childhood. To lose a child is to suffer an amputation.

It is a paradox of human nature that we undervalue what is priceless and overvalue what is worthless. People do not know what they have lost through abortion. Likewise, they do not know what they have lost by denying God.

Newman’s reference to the child as “a visitant in a higher state” is most appropriate. It is remarkable that a child, so limited in age and experience, can be, in some mysterious way, wiser than the parents who invite him into their lives. They marvel how lovable and loving this being is. They come to believe that his prodigality can be explained only by his being a gift from God. 

“Heaven lies about us in our infancy.” We age too quickly and need a child to help restore the vision we have lost. “A child is a beam of sunlight,” said the American preacher, Lyman Abbott, “from the Infinite and Eternal, with possibilities of virtue and vice, but as yet unstained.” As a gift from God, a child leads us back to God.

The notion that a newborn child is a gift from God is reflected in the names given to children. There are hundreds of such names across many languages. A few examples include Dorothy, Theodora, Eudora and Thea (Greek); Abisai, Addai and Zebedee (Hebrew); Donato (Latin); Dorek (Polish); Fedyenka and Fyodor (Russian); Maceo (Spanish); Hanni (Finnish); Jarshika (Tamil); Siobhán (Irish); Tanaquil (Etruscan); Itzae (Mayan); and Bogdan and Todor (Slavic).

These names throughout the world and over the course of history are testimonies to the human intuition that a child is, indeed, a gift from God.