A Child's Plea for Eternal Life
To my very dear parents,
I am writing this letter to you because I have an especially urgent need at this time in my life. Firstly, though, I want to thank you with all my heart for giving me life and for having me baptized six years ago.
You have been wonderful parents to me, wanting nothing but the best for me all these years. I am very proud of you and plan to try not to ever disappoint you in any way. I will forever be grateful to you and I will forever be grateful to God for giving me such wonderful parents.
In fact God is the reason that I am writing this letter. Recall that this month is the sixth anniversary of my baptism. I have reached an important milestone in my life!
Over the past several years I have learned how to show my gratitude to you and how to please you. Sadly I also learned how I could easily disappoint you and fall out of grace with you so to speak. That learning process has been, and continues to be, very important and of immense value. But the time has come for me to learn how to relate to another type of parent; the one who adopted me at my baptism. Namely God.
What I need for you to remember now is that you were not alone in the process of giving me life, for my life as well as your own is a gift from God. Please remember too that God alone made me fully human by giving me a soul. Thus adding to the natural order of my being, a supernatural order.
When I was baptized that supernatural order of my being was given birth into the life of sanctifying grace. At that moment God came to dwell in me! Grace made me a living temple of the Blessed Trinity!
That we may understand this, it is well to recall that through sanctifying grace we are “begotten of God”. We live a new life, the participated divine life through which we become children of God. Part of what God gives to us in baptism is sanctifying grace. Through grace my soul is constantly receiving from God its supernatural life just as my body was constantly receiving vital sustenance from you mother when, as an embryo, it dwelled in you. Thus my supernatural life is a living organism and it requires constant nourishment.
After my natural birth my life became somewhat dependent on my own actions. For example, I could choose to refuse the food you provided for the nourishment of my body. If I did so to the extreme, my life would perish. Likewise, the life of my soul will perish if it is not nourished by a continual presence of sanctifying grace. God cannot dwell in a soul void of grace. If we go into eternity deprived of sanctifying grace, then we have lost God forever! Therefore, once we have received sanctifying grace in baptism, it then becomes a matter of life-and-death importance that we preserve this supernatural gift throughout our entire life.
That is why this letter to you is so urgent! I have reached the age at which I am able to learn how to sustain an ever-constant presence of sanctifying grace within my soul. And also to learn how to increase that grace and even recover it if, out of weakness, I should loose it. There is much for me to learn and it is vital that I do so.
I know that you wouldn’t deprive me of an education that would enable me to live a very fruitful earthly life. The education that I ask for now is capable of giving me eternal life and happiness!
I also know that you would like for me to attain my full potential in all things. The fact is that my humanity itself cannot attain its full potential without sanctifying grace. So I want to learn all that I can about the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit and every thing there is to learn about the Christian way of living. My name means Christ-bearer. Please help me to always carry Jesus within the temple of my soul. Where the Son is the Father is, and where they both are the Holy Spirit is. This truth fills me with more joy than anything else I can imagine!
I feel so sad, though, for people who do not have God in their lives. Without God in one’s life it is so easy to make serious mistakes. Such people tend to make important decisions in their lives that hurt themselves or worse yet hurt other people. Sometimes the damaging effects of those decisions are irreparable. I want to be as best prepared as possible when I have important decisions to make. I want to always receive the correct answer when I ask the question “what would Jesus do” or “what would Jesus have me do in this particular situation”.
When Jesus was twelve years old He was teaching the elders in the Temple. I hope that when I am twelve years old I will be able to teach my companions the Christian way of living. I hope that it won’t be necessary, but I want to be able to help children whose parents neglected to provide them with a Christian education. In that way I can truly live up to my name. I have much to learn and I’m anxious to begin!
With all my love, Christopher
To my very dear parents,I am writing this letter to you because I have an especially urgent need at this time in my life. Firstly, though, I want to thank you with all my heart for giving me life and for having me baptized six years ago.
You have been wonderful parents to me, wanting nothing but the best for me all these years. I am very proud of you and plan to try not to ever disappoint you in any way. I will forever be grateful to you and I will forever be grateful to God for giving me such wonderful parents.
In fact God is the reason that I am writing this letter. Recall that this month is the sixth anniversary of my baptism. I have reached an important milestone in my life!
Over the past several years I have learned how to show my gratitude to you and how to please you. Sadly I also learned how I could easily disappoint you and fall out of grace with you so to speak. That learning process has been, and continues to be, very important and of immense value. But the time has come for me to learn how to relate to another type of parent; the one who adopted me at my baptism. Namely God.
What I need for you to remember now is that you were not alone in the process of giving me life, for my life as well as your own is a gift from God. Please remember too that God alone made me fully human by giving me a soul. Thus adding to the natural order of my being, a supernatural order.
When I was baptized that supernatural order of my being was given birth into the life of sanctifying grace. At that moment God came to dwell in me! Grace made me a living temple of the Blessed Trinity!
That we may understand this, it is well to recall that through sanctifying grace we are “begotten of God”. We live a new life, the participated divine life through which we become children of God. Part of what God gives to us in baptism is sanctifying grace. Through grace my soul is constantly receiving from God its supernatural life just as my body was constantly receiving vital sustenance from you mother when, as an embryo, it dwelled in you. Thus my supernatural life is a living organism and it requires constant nourishment.
After my natural birth my life became somewhat dependent on my own actions. For example, I could choose to refuse the food you provided for the nourishment of my body. If I did so to the extreme, my life would perish. Likewise, the life of my soul will perish if it is not nourished by a continual presence of sanctifying grace. God cannot dwell in a soul void of grace. If we go into eternity deprived of sanctifying grace, then we have lost God forever! Therefore, once we have received sanctifying grace in baptism, it then becomes a matter of life-and-death importance that we preserve this supernatural gift throughout our entire life.
That is why this letter to you is so urgent! I have reached the age at which I am able to learn how to sustain an ever-constant presence of sanctifying grace within my soul. And also to learn how to increase that grace and even recover it if, out of weakness, I should loose it. There is much for me to learn and it is vital that I do so.
I know that you wouldn’t deprive me of an education that would enable me to live a very fruitful earthly life. The education that I ask for now is capable of giving me eternal life and happiness!
I also know that you would like for me to attain my full potential in all things. The fact is that my humanity itself cannot attain its full potential without sanctifying grace. So I want to learn all that I can about the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit and every thing there is to learn about the Christian way of living. My name means Christ-bearer. Please help me to always carry Jesus within the temple of my soul. Where the Son is the Father is, and where they both are the Holy Spirit is. This truth fills me with more joy than anything else I can imagine!
I feel so sad, though, for people who do not have God in their lives. Without God in one’s life it is so easy to make serious mistakes. Such people tend to make important decisions in their lives that hurt themselves or worse yet hurt other people. Sometimes the damaging effects of those decisions are irreparable. I want to be as best prepared as possible when I have important decisions to make. I want to always receive the correct answer when I ask the question “what would Jesus do” or “what would Jesus have me do in this particular situation”.
When Jesus was twelve years old He was teaching the elders in the Temple. I hope that when I am twelve years old I will be able to teach my companions the Christian way of living. I hope that it won’t be necessary, but I want to be able to help children whose parents neglected to provide them with a Christian education. In that way I can truly live up to my name. I have much to learn and I’m anxious to begin!
With all my love, Christopher
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