“Whoever does not accept the reign of God like a little child shall not take part in it”
Do you, the smallest of all, want to find life? Keep faith and humility in your heart and there you will find compassion, help, those words that God will speak in your heart as well as He who keeps you and dwells close to you, both secretly and visibly. Do you want to discover what life gives? Walk on the path of simplicity. Do not claim to know anything before God. Faith follows simplicity but presumption follows subtlety of knowledge and detours in its thinking; it draws us away from God.
When you come before God in prayer, be very small in your thinking, like an ant,... like a stuttering child. Do not say anything before him that you claim to know, but approach God with the heart of a child. Go before him to receive the solicitude with which fathers watch over their very small children. It has been said: “The Lord guards the little children.” The one who is like a little child can approach a snake and the snake will not harm him... In its innocence the body of the person who is like a little child is such that the hidden providence, which watches over its fragile members, covers it with an invisible garment so that nothing can harm it.
St. John Climacus