Justin Appel

Dear Friends in Christ,

Today’s Gospel lesson reminds us that Jesus thought a great deal of children. He even went so far as to set up the child as a model for the disciples (and us) to follow, for instance:

Whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it. (Luke 18:17)

This Gospel and an article a friend sent me recently have got me wondering if one of these aspects might be a child’s ability to see the world as a meaningful place, or, as it is put in popular parlance, in his or her ability to see the world as ‘enchanted’. Perhaps it is the child who sees, at least temporarily, the possibility that the world is shot with glory, that the creation shouts out and ‘declares the glory of God’. Perhaps it is only a matter of time until that ability is subjugated to a process of degradation and disenchantment, due in part to the demands of our post-industrial, materialistic, post-modern milieu.

I wonder about this because I’m a musician who works with artistic materials, and it seems to me that art is basically about discovering meaning in the material environment that speaks powerfully of Transcendence (something of which the milieu cannot fathom). I don’t mean something like signs of intelligent design, but rather flashes of intelligence (a felicitous phrase from Jonathan Pageau) in which God is known directly through some material experience or correspondence, even if the ingredients of such experiences remain ephemeral. This capacity involves what Christians traditionally call the nous, that intellective (not only cognitive, but spiritual) capacity that allows us to know God. As Christians, our spiritual task, traditionally understood, is to purify that nous by means of repentance, sacraments, asceticism, etc, which is increasingly necessary because of our sins, which cloud our nous. At least some part of this spiritual project seems to involve the development of a disposition to God that is childlike, i.e., involving a certain simplicity, humility, faith, etc.

The question is worth pondering: In this day and age, what does it mean to look at the world in a childlike way? What does it mean to ‘receive the Kingdom of God’ like a child?

However, rather than try to resolve this question, I’ll leave it open and bring in a choral setting by Arvo Pärt, on the Troparion for the feast of St. Nicholas, that patron saint of children.

Yours in Christ,
Justin

Alleluia Tropos, Arvo Pärt

(The text is in Old Church Slavonic.)

A rule of faith and a model of meekness,
a teacher of abstinence hath the reality
shewn thee unto thy flock;
therewithal hast thou acquired:
by humility – greatness,
by poverty – riches;
O Father hierarch Nicholas,
intercede before Christ the God
that our souls may be saved.