Innocence is a sort of litmus test for what is good and bad in life. Children more readily smile at what is good and cry at what is iniquitous.
Innocence can sometimes even surprise us with its strength. A child can dance amid despair and desolation because her joy comes with her into the world and prompts her to dance as if she were in the midst of paradise.
However, innocence is something children lose as they grow. Eventually, they begin to abandon all belief in fairy tales and deal with "real" life.
For people of faith, however, it is something to be restored. The gift of God’s grace restores to us some of the innocence our first parents lost. Grace doesn’t only heal us from wrongdoing, it flowers into all sorts of thoughts and motivations and instincts, replanted in the soul by God. This replanting allows us to be uninfluenced by our deceitful human hearts.
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