May-June 2010 - To Search is to Find

Q: Why does the Catholic Church baptize infants even though they do not yet understand what is going on?

Father Benjamin from Congo baptising baby Liam in the Faroe Islands, 2009.

The Faroe Islands are in the North Atlantic. There are only about 100 or so Catholics out of a population of around 50,000. Your editor spent about six weeks there in the summer of 2000.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us that infant baptism has been the practice from time immemorial and that it is a sign of the sheer giftedness of God's love. You can find what the Catechism says, in Nos 1250 to 1252.

I would make two comparisons. A baby doesn't choose her parents. When parents follow God's will and are open to the possibility of a child within marriage they are welcoming that child as a gift from God and taking on the responsibility of helping the child discover God's love for her and to discover that God is calling her to eternal life. Jesus speaks of baptism as being 'born again'. We receive the life of God himself and become sons and daughters of God through baptism.

The same applies to a child whose birth is unintended and is born outside of marriage. Usually it is the mother who is left, literally, holding the baby and she needs the love of the wider community so that her child will receive the precious gift of baptism, the life of God himself, the seed of eternal life.

My second comparison is this: when you were born, apart from automatically becoming a member of your parents' family, you also automatically became a citizen of the Philippines. Nobody asks why a child is not allowed to choose their citizenship when they become adults. (In Philippine law, as I understand it, if a child is born to one Filipino parent and one foreign parent, she has to choose when she reaches the age of 18 whether she will keep her Filipino citizenship or take the citizenship of the other parent).

However, baptism isn't automatic. The parents have to choose to bring their child for baptism and to choose godparents who will help them bring up the child as a good Catholic.

The person baptized as an infant has to make her own decision as she gets older to take on the responsibilities of being a Christian, a daughter of God the Father, a sister of Jesus Christ and of every other Christian. It is the responsibility primarily of the parents, helped by the godparents and the wider community, to nourish, by their example, the gift of faith the child has received at her baptism so that she will joyfully embrace it as her own. Sadly, for many young people in Western countries, the sacrament through which we become 'adult' Christians, Confirmation, becomes the 'sacrament' of exiting from the Church. In the Eastern Churches, both Catholic and Orthodox, confirmation takes place along with (infant) baptism. In the Latin or Roman Rite of the Catholic Church, to which we in the Philippines belong, if an older child or an adult is being baptized they are confirmed in the same ceremony.

Q: Children in the catechism class in our community have asked why we hunt eggs during Easter. I don't know the answer!

You can find information about Easter eggs on Wikipedia here. I know that Wikipedia is not always accurate or scholarly but this article seems to be sober, scholarly and comprehensive.
For me the fertilized egg is an obvious symbol of the Resurrection of Jesus in that the chick when hatching has to break through the shell of the egg, just as Jesus broke out from the tomb.

In Ireland our tradition is to have eggs made of chocolate, much bigger than hens' eggs. My favorite Easter egg was a large chocolate one, made by Cadbury's, stuffed with chocolate candies inside, as in the photo below! (Somebody ate the chocolate candies inside that on the left before the photo was taken!)