Luke 18:15–17

Luke 18:15 — "They were also bringing their babies to him, that he might touch them." Luke's word here is brephe (βρέφη) — not paidia (older children) as in Matthew 19:13, but specifically infants or even unborn children (the same word Luke uses in 1:41 for John the Baptist leaping in Elizabeth's womb). This precise choice is significant: those being brought to Jesus are entirely helpless, wholly dependent, utterly incapable of earning or meriting anything. They cannot walk to Jesus on their own, cannot articulate a request, cannot demonstrate moral worth. They are brought by others. The disciples' rebuke — addressed not to the children but to those carrying them — reflects a common ancient assumption that a rabbi's time was too valuable to spend on infants who could neither understand teaching nor offer anything in return. The disciples here act as theological gatekeepers, drawing a boundary that Jesus will immediately demolish.

Luke 18:16 — "Allow the little children to come to me, and don't hinder them." The verb "hinder" (kōlúete, κωλύετε) carries striking weight in early Christian usage. The same verb appears in Acts 8:36, when the Ethiopian eunuch asks, "What hinders me from being baptized?" — and in Acts 10:47, when Peter asks, "Can anyone hinder the water for baptizing these people?" The Fathers and later the Church's liturgical tradition recognized this verbal echo as no accident: the not hindering of children from Jesus became a scriptural warrant for infant Baptism. Jesus' words are not merely an expression of personal warmth toward children; they are a declaration about access to salvation. "God's Kingdom belongs to such as these" (toioutōn, τοιούτων) — a genitive of possession. The Kingdom is not something children will eventually inherit; it belongs to them now, as a present reality, because their mode of being exemplifies the only valid mode of receiving it.

Luke 18:17 — "Whoever does not receive God's Kingdom like a little child will in no way enter into it." This is the key teaching, and it reorients the passage from a scene of pastoral tenderness into a hard dominical saying (amen legō hymin, the solemn "most certainly I tell you" formula). To receive the Kingdom "like a little child" (hōs paidion) is to receive it as a gift one did not earn and cannot control, with open hands rather than calculating ones. The brephos of verse 15 cannot argue its way in, cannot produce credentials, cannot leverage status. It can only receive — and this passivity before divine initiative is not spiritual immaturity but its fullest expression. Placed here by Luke immediately before the Rich Young Ruler (18:18–23), the contrast is sharp and intentional: the ruler comes asking what he must do to inherit eternal life and goes away grieving because he cannot relinquish his possessions. The infant comes with nothing and receives everything. The typological sense deepens this further: Israel was called to remember it was the smallest of nations (Deuteronomy 7:7), wholly dependent on God's election, not its own merit. The anawim — the poor and lowly of the Psalms and prophets — model the same posture Jesus now embodies in these children.

Catholic tradition has read this passage with remarkable consistency across multiple registers of meaning.

On Infant Baptism: The Church Fathers seized on the logic of verses 15–16 as foundational. Origen (Commentary on Romans, V.9) attests that the practice of baptizing infants was received "from the Apostles." Augustine, combating Pelagianism, drew heavily on this passage: if the Kingdom belongs to infants, and if "no one enters the Kingdom without being born of water and Spirit" (John 3:5), then infants must be capable of receiving Baptism. The Council of Carthage (418 AD) and later Trent (Session VII, Canon 13) formally condemned the view that infant Baptism was invalid. The Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC 1250–1252) cites the necessity of Baptism for all, including infants, and notes that "the practice of infant Baptism is an immemorial tradition of the Church."

On Grace and Receptivity: The passage is a parable of pure grace. The infant contributes nothing; the Kingdom is pure gift. This maps onto the Catholic teaching on prevenient grace — that God's initiative always precedes and makes possible any human response (CCC 2000, 1996). St. Thérèse of Lisieux, whose "Little Way" is essentially a sustained meditation on this passage, understood that "remaining little" before God means abandoning all reliance on one's own spiritual achievements. Pope Benedict XVI, in Deus Caritas Est (§1), speaks of love as something "received" before it is enacted — a fundamentally child-like structure.

On the Dignity of Children: The Church reads this passage as a foundation for the sacred dignity of children and, by extension, of unborn life. Luke's use of brephos for both the unborn John and the infants here (1:41; 18:15) grounds the continuity of human dignity from conception in the very language of the Gospel.

For a contemporary Catholic, this passage issues at least three concrete challenges. First, it confronts any tendency to treat prayer, the sacraments, or the spiritual life as achievements to be managed rather than gifts to be received. The Catholic who approaches Confession primarily calculating minimum requirements, or who receives Communion while rehearsing personal merit, is acting more like the Rich Young Ruler than like the brephos. Second, for parents: bringing children — including infants — to the liturgy, to Eucharistic Adoration, to receive blessings, is not merely tolerated by Jesus but positively commanded. The disciples who "rebuked" the parents are a warning against any church culture that treats the presence of small children as a disruption to be managed rather than a grace to be welcomed. Third, Luke's choice of brephos confronts the culture of abortion with the Gospel's own vocabulary: the same word for the leaping unborn John is the word for those Jesus blesses and declares heirs of the Kingdom. Catholic witness to the dignity of unborn life finds in this verse not a proof-text but a Gospel image.