By Fr. Rolando V. De La Rosa, OP
THROUGH UNTRUE
Many images of the Santo Niño that we see in churches or carried in Ati-Atihan festivals portray him wearing a crown and a velvet cape, holding a scepter or a globe, and radiating power and authority. They resemble miniature images of Christ the King. Yet one may ask: Why not depict the Santo Niño as an ordinary child, embodying our fragile humanity?
God became a child because He wished to understand what it truly means to be human. From our catechism, we learn that Jesus is fully divine and fully human. His humanity belongs to the very core of His being. But becoming human was not an automatic process for Jesus. He had to begin with infancy and childhood, the stages of life in which all of us are most vulnerable.
As a child, He experienced dependence, sickness, and hardship, along with other painful yet formative dimensions of human life. Jesus learned that being human entails suffering. Scripture expresses this poignantly: “Although he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered” (Hebrews 5:8). The Gospels portray Him as deeply affected by hunger, fatigue, grief, and sorrow. Through suffering, He learned that joy cannot be fully appreciated without pain.
Through struggle, obedience, and love, He “grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and others” (Luke 2:52). Part of that wisdom is the realization that love is given before it is deserved, and that forgiveness is more powerful than vengeance.
Jesus also learned why, despite our basic goodness, we are tempted to sin. But by rejecting temptation, He revealed the grandeur of our humanity. He showed that we are capable of choosing the good despite the seductiveness of sin. By His example, He taught us that excuses such as “I was born this way” or “I can’t help it. I just can’t say no” diminish, rather than honor, our human dignity.
The Santo Niño also reminds us of the childhood virtues we often lose in our haste to grow up. Like any ordinary child filled with wonder and reverence, the child Jesus must have seen, heard, smelled, tasted, and felt what the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins calls “the dearest freshness deep down things.” He must have listened attentively to nature, to people, and to life itself, refusing to confine His gaze to what is merely practical, functional, or useful.
Above all, the child Jesus must have played often. His playfulness, was surely tested by the pains of growing up and the pressures of survival. Yet He resisted surrendering the thrill of discovery and the joy of a game played for its own sake.
Today, many children are drawn too early into the vortex of competitive sports, where victory and power are treated as the highest values. One troubling consequence is that children stop looking for playmates. They instead look for opponents to conquer or humiliate.
Worse, many parents nurture their children’s curiosity and sense of wonder by regularly rushing them to air-conditioned malls to ride plastic horses, pedal stationary bikes, and play video games. At home, children spend their days absorbed in endless television shows, livestreamed videos, and mindless texting and chatting, while consuming a steady diet of junk foods. No wonder, many of them are early candidates for obesity, diabetes, and stroke.
On this Feast of the Santo Niño, let us pray for children everywhere who are constantly exposed to screens, text messages, and videos, and are drawn into an endless rhythm of doing, solving, clicking, and responding. May their parents teach them the habit of turning their hearts toward God, and speaking to Him in prayer.
The Gospels show us Jesus stepping away from the noise to pray, sometimes through the night, sometimes with tears and deep longing for the Father’s guidance. From His earliest years, through the quiet faith and daily example of Mary and Joseph, He learned that prayer was the foundation of His life. May children discover that God is not distant or unreachable, but a loving Father who is closer to them than they could ever imagine.
