childish or childlike

"I give praise to you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth,
for although you have hidden these things
from the wise and the learned
you have revealed them to the childlike."

From today's Gospel reading from Matthew 11, we hear that the Lord expects us to have prepared our hearts to receive His truth by being like children. Envision the eager faces of kids prepared to learn on the first day of school. But then there are plenty who have quite different faces. We don't always have the same zeal when it comes to learning, but that often comes from the misguided notion that we have all that we need already. When I came home one day in kindergarten and announced that I was done with school, having already learned how to read, my mom pointed to the milk carton and asked me to pronounce "homogenized". Not already having this one down, I failed miserably. She said we could revisit this topic when I knew what it was. We don't have it all down. We still need to be taught. May our hearts be not only open but eager like those of school children to sit down and learn from the heart of our Divine Master.