2687. 'For she said, Let me not see the death of the boy' means grief that [spiritual truth] would thus perish. This is clear from the meaning of 'seeing the death' as perishing, and from the meaning of 'the boy' as spiritual truth, dealt with above. From this and from the feeling of despair because truth has been made desolate it is evident that it is a more interior grief that these words hold within them.

1776. Though it may seem paradoxical it is nevertheless perfectly true that angels have a better and fuller understanding of the internal sense of the Word when very young boys and girls are reading it than when adults do so with whom there is no faith grounded in charity. I have been told the reason why, and it is this: Very young boys and girls live in a state of mutual love and innocence, and so their most tender vessels are almost heavenly, being simply capacities for receiving which are able to be made ready by the Lord to receive. No awareness however of what He is doing enters into their perceptions except through a certain delight in keeping with their character and disposition. The angels said that the Word of the Lord is a dead letter, but that in everyone, when he is reading it, it is given life by the Lord, each according to his capacity to receive it, and that it is made alive according to the life in his charity and according to his state of innocence. This happens in countless and varied ways.