Tag: Baptism

1 min read

Sacraments

Why Do We Baptize Infants?

Father Ray Ryland

May 13, 2022 11:23 pm May 13, 2022

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First, a reminder about “scriptural foundation”: To speak of the Catholic faith as “based” in Scripture is pure anachronism. The Church herself wrote the New Testament, and canonized the Old Testament. The Church had been expanding throughout the world for more than three centuries before she established the canon of Scripture. In the New Testament, the Church enshrined key elements of the Gospel, but not its entirety. Read again John 21:25. The Catholic faith, therefore, cannot be “based” in Scripture, but it is reflected in Scripture.

We are all born with original sin; what the Council of Trent called “death of the soul.” That is the reason the Church baptizes even infants who have no personal sins. We want our newborns to be incorporated into the Mystical Body of Christ at the earliest possible time. The fact that grace is purely a gift is most clearly demonstrated in baptizing infants.

Consider this: When a child is born of American parents, the child receives a great gift, American citizenship. In order to exercise that gift the child will need instruction for mature citizenship. But never will the child be more of a citizen than at the moment of birth. By analogy we can say that the infant becomes a Christian at the moment of baptism. Yet that infant will need nurture for the rest of his or her life to grow in sanctity. The Acts of the Apostles refers to baptism of households (see 16:15), which presumably included young children, even infants. Beginning in the second century, there is clear testimony to infant baptism as an immemorial tradition of the Church.

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Sacraments

Godparents and Sponsors: Who Qualifies?

Father Francis Hoffman

May 3, 2022 7:14 am May 3, 2022

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The answer is in the Code of Canon Law. Canon 874 tells us that a sponsor should be (1) at least 16, unless the bishop or pastor makes an exception;…

The answer is in the Code of Canon Law. Canon 874 tells us that a sponsor should be (1) at least 16, unless the bishop or pastor makes an exception; (2) a practicing Catholic who has already been confirmed and made his first Communion; (3) free of any canonical penalty; and (4) neither the father nor mother of the person to be baptized.

The same criteria apply for confirmation sponsors. In my opinion, the most important criterion is that the sponsor be a good practicing Catholic.

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8 min read

Sacraments

What Is the Meaning of Jesus’ Baptism?

Bishop Donald J. Hying

January 9, 2022 5:22 am January 9, 2022

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We Christians reflect upon and celebrate the baptism of Jesus in significant ways: liturgically, at the conclusion of the Christmas season; devotionally, as the First Luminous Mystery of the Rosary;…

But if the baptism performed by John the Baptist was meant as a sign of repentance of sin and conversion to a new way of life, it’s reasonable to ask: Why did Jesus, as the sinless Son of God, receive baptism?

Narrated in each of the four Gospels, the baptism of Jesus marks the inauguration of His public ministry — His emergence from a life of seeming obscurity into a life of growing popularity on account of His preaching, miracles, healings and proclamation of mercy and forgiveness.

Jesus steps into the Jordan River and into His mission of redemption through this public religious act. The descent of the dove symbolizes the anointing of the Holy Spirit, which Jesus receives as the Christ, Greek for “the Anointed One.”

Jesus’ Identity

This mark of divine blessing is accompanied by the voice of the Father in heaven who proclaims, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased” (Mt 3:17). This mysterious utterance reveals Jesus as the Son of God, the One sent from the Father to accomplish the salvation of the human race. In this dramatic scene we already grasp the identity and function of the Most Blessed Trinity — we see the Father as the One who begets and sends the Son to redeem the human race, the Son as the obedient servant who accomplishes the will of the Father, and the Holy Spirit as the Sanctifier who empowers the mission of redemption.

Already at the beginning of His ministry, Jesus’ fundamental identity is situated in this Trinitarian relationship. In the early Church, the visit of the Magi, the baptism of the Lord and the miracle at Cana together constituted the meaning of Epiphany, for each of these three events reveals, manifests and unveils who Jesus is.

Drawing profound parallels between Jesus’ baptism and our own, we can see that, just as Jesus is revealed as the beloved Son at the Jordan, so, too, we receive a new identity in baptism as adopted children of the Father. The fruit of Christ’s victory over the power of sin and death is the divine invitation for us to share in the very life of the Trinity. Jesus Christ — namely, the Son — freely shares His very nature with us through the transforming waters of baptism. At the moment of our spiritual rebirth in the font, the Father beholds us with delight, exclaiming, “This is my beloved son, this is my beloved daughter with whom I am well pleased.” Christianity first and foremost is about whom we have become in Christ before it is about what we do or how we act. This saving act of spiritual adoption draws us into the very life of God and His merciful grace.

Identification with Sinners

In his book “Jesus of Nazareth,” Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI insightfully offers another facet of the baptism of the Lord. The baptismal action of John the Baptist was markedly different from any other religious rituals that had preceded it. The baptism he offered the crowds that came from Jerusalem occurred only once, signifying a radical break from a former life of sin and a new way of thinking and acting — all of which was framed by the imminent emergence of One greater than John who would “baptize with fire.” The crowds responded to John’s baptism as a reaction to his fiery preaching against sin and the call to conversion.

The retired Pope Benedict sees Jesus’ baptism as an expression of His fundamental submission to the will of the Father and His complete identification with sinners. By submersion in the waters of the Jordan, Jesus is publicly seen as one in need of repentance and forgiveness himself, although He has no need of it in actuality. Jesus is already embracing the enormous weight of humanity’s sinfulness, just as He will do again in a definitive and final way on the cross — labeled then as a criminal and blasphemer. The mysterious events at the Jordan River already foreshadow the saving acts of Christ’s death and resurrection.

Pope Benedict notes that the icons of the Eastern Church visualize this intrinsic connection between the baptism of the Lord and the Paschal Mystery by depicting the waters of the Jordan “as a liquid tomb having the form of a dark cavern, which is in turn the iconographic sign of Hades, the underworld, or hell.” Just as the Lord descends into the swirling waters of death at His baptism, He goes down to the netherworld after His crucifixion to rescue the souls of lost humanity.

Divine Condescension

In this downward descent, this complete identification with sinners, we grasp the radical humility of Jesus. He is the One who empties himself, not clinging to His equality with God but becoming a slave for the sake of our salvation. This is so beautifully articulated in the kenotic hymn of the second chapter of St. Paul’s Letter to the Philippians. God could have saved us in any manner that He chose, but He seems to embrace the most difficult and arduous way — the path of Incarnation and accompaniment.

Christianity is the only world religion that believes the omnipotent and mysterious God humbled himself to become one of His own creatures, embracing the fullness of our humanity in order to redeem us from inside our own nature and condition. The Church has never gotten over the wonder of this divine condescension. We celebrate the Word made flesh not only in the glory of Christmas, but in the fullness of the liturgy, prayer and moral life of the Christian tradition.

We can place the baptism of Christ into the total context of His humble identification with us, beginning with the eternal Second Person of the Trinity assuming our flesh in the womb of the Virgin Mary and continuing with Jesus’ ministry to the sick and sinful, His table fellowship with tax collectors, His loving conversations with people of ill repute, the vulnerability of the Eucharist — as Jesus places himself completely at our disposal in the wondrous sacrament of His body and blood — and His doing the work of a slave during the Last Supper foot-washing.

The Cross of Christ becomes the sacred intersection of God’s redemptive mercy and our ancient curse of sin and death. Without ever having sinned himself, Jesus embraces the consequences of our sin, which is death and alienation, and accepts a horrible death, filled with pain and suffering. Wrapping himself in our sins, He lifts it all up to the Father as a radical offering — a complete holocaust of the self. Executed as a criminal and a blasphemer, crucified outside the city gate as one seemingly cut off from God, Jesus seals His identification with sinners in His own blood.

How does the Father respond to this murder of His Son, this obedience even unto death? When the centurion pierces the side of Christ, what flows out from the side of the crucified One? Not divine vengeance or wrath or retribution, but blood and water, symbols of baptism and Eucharist — instruments of mercy, love, forgiveness and redemption. By accomplishing the saving deed of our salvation through His death and resurrection, Jesus himself becomes the baptismal fountain of the New Covenant.

Clarity of Mission

In Christian baptism, we become adopted children of the Father, members of the Church, the Body of Christ, and temples of the Holy Spirit. Baptism washes away our original sin and claims us for the kingdom of God. Through this saving sacrament, God fills us with sanctifying grace, with the fullness of the Trinitarian life. To understand the meaning and implications of our baptism is to fundamentally grasp our identity, vocation and mission as disciples of the Lord Jesus and members of the household of God.

In Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan, we see Him anointed by the Holy Spirit as the Christ, we hear the Father proclaim His fundamental identity as the beloved Son, and we perceive Jesus’ mission as one of humility, a self-emptying love and sacrificial identification with everything in us that was lost, broken and dead.

We spend time and energy seeking a lost object to the extent that we value it. I will spend much more time looking for my wallet or cellphone than I will a misplaced magazine. How infinitely valuable we must be to the Lord God that He sent His own Son to seek and save us in the valley of death! The whole Christ-event finds a clarity of mission when Jesus is submerged in the waters of the Jordan at the hands of John the Baptist.

Bishop Donald J. Hying is the Bishop-elect for the Diocese of Madison, Wisconsin.

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7 min read

Sacraments

Ways to be a good godparent

Woodeene Koenig-Bricker

November 19, 2021 7:28 am November 19, 2021

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7 min read

Being a godparent is one of those not-so-well-understood honors and responsibilities that some of us are asked to undertake on behalf of the children of family and friends. While we…

Being a godparent is one of those not-so-well-understood honors and responsibilities that some of us are asked to undertake on behalf of the children of family and friends. While we may be willing, we don’t always know what becoming a godparent entails.

The role of godparent developed out of the task of sponsor in the catechumenate during the early Church. The function of the sponsor was to insure that a person was ready to receive all three sacraments of initiation — baptism, Eucharist and confirmation — and then to help him or her live out the Christian life. In the early Middle Ages, when infant baptism became firmly established, a sponsor was called a “ patrinus, ” or “godfather,” a term that is retained in popular use although the proper term still is sponsor.

While the early Church understood that a sponsor, or godparent, had a definite, hands-on function, all too often today being a godparent is viewed as a ceremonial honor such as when Bono of the rock band U2 was named godparent to Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt’s twins, children unlikely ever to see the inside of a church, much less be baptized or confirmed. Or godparenting is seen as being a real-life fairy godmother who swoops in bestowing gifts on special occasions. Or it is thought to be akin to the role of a civil guardian who would take over the rearing of a child if the parents were to die.

Actually, none of those is even close to the actual function of a godparent. Essentially, a godparent is a person who aids and assists in the spiritual development of a child (sometimes an adult convert who is a “child” in the faith). As the Code of Canon Law puts it: “In so far as possible, a person being baptized is to be assigned a sponsor. In the case of an adult baptism, the sponsor’s role is to assist the person in Christian initiation. In the case of an infant baptism, the role is together with the parents to present the child for baptism, and to help it live a Christian life befitting the baptized and faithfully to fulfill the duties inherent in baptism” (Canon 872).

Certain requirements and responsibilities regarding godparents must be met according to Church law, but a practical question still remains: What makes a good godparent?

A person of deep faith

First and foremost, a godparent must be a person of deep faith. His or her responsibility is to help assist in developing and establishing faith in another, so it is essential that he or she understands Catholic teaching and lives the faith on a deep, personal daily basis. You cannot help to pass on that which you do not fully and completely believe yourself. It’s not enough merely to know the faith; a godparent must live that faith. That means the usual of attending Mass on Sunday and observing the laws of the Church, but it also means being a person who is committed to his or her own ongoing spiritual growth and development through study, prayer, the sacraments and the corporal and spiritual works of mercy.

A good godparent is also, insofar as possible, positively involved in the ongoing faith experience of their godchild. This doesn’t mean merely being physically present at baptism or confirmation, but taking as active a role as practical in preparation for first reconciliation and first Communion, as well as later in life with marriage or holy orders. This probably will mean being encouraging, supportive and enthusiastic, but in cases where the parents can’t or won’t take the child to religious education classes or accompany them to sacramental preparation, godparents need to be willing to step in and take a more direct role.

As children grow older, commemorating the day of baptism and/or confirmation with a call, visit, card or appropriate gift can help keep those spiritual ties intact. In short, a good godparent walks along the entire journey of faith with a godchild; not just waves at the beginning or cheers from the sidelines.

A safe haven

One of the areas where a godparent can be particularly valuable is to become a safe haven for discussion of doubts and questions, especially as godchildren grow into their teens. Parents naturally get nervous when their children question teachings of the Church on moral issues, so a godparent can become a person who will listen and talk about emotionally charged issues without becoming defensive (or offensive). Teens may find topics like the Church’s teaching on sex before marriage, contraception and homosexuality easier to discuss with a non-parent, although issues like how we know Jesus is really God, what it means to be saved and why being a Catholic is important can also be areas for investigation with a godparent.

Another arena where a good godparent can make a difference is in exposure to sacramentals and devotional practices. While it’s not necessary to inundate godchildren with religious gewgaws, making sure they have a well-made rosary, a medal of their patron saint, a Catholic Bible and a crucifix is certainly an important duty of godparents.

The same is true of devotions. Assuring that godchildren know how to pray the Rosary, say the Stations of the Cross and are exposed to saints, novenas and seasonal practices like the Advent wreath are other ways godparents can be proactive without intruding in a godchild’s life.

Of course, many of these activities presuppose that godparents live close enough to godchildren to be physically present on a regular basis, which isn’t always true in today’s mobile society. That’s why the single most important action a good godparent can undertake on behalf of a godchild is regular, sustained prayer. As Alfred, Lord Tennyson said, “More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of.” While it is true that parents are the primary teachers of the faith, godparents can make an enormous difference in how that faith takes root by their ongoing uplifting of their godchildren in prayer.

If you are asked to become a godparent (or are thinking about selecting one), remember that this role is to be taken seriously, for the actions of a good godparent can literally make an eternal difference in a child’s life.

Woodeene Koenig-Bricker is a best-selling author and served as editor of Catholic Parent magazine for many years. She writes from Eugene, Ore.

Requirements For Being A Godparent

“Be not less than 16 years of age, unless a different age has been stipulated by the diocesan bishop, or unless the parish priest or the minister considers that there is a just reason for an exception to be made;
“be a Catholic who has been confirmed and has received the blessed Eucharist, and who lives a life of Faith which befits the role to be undertaken;
“not labor under a canonical penalty, whether imposed or declared;
“not be either the father or the mother of the person to be baptized;
“a baptized person who belongs to a non-Catholic ecclesial community may be admitted only in company with a Catholic sponsor, and then simply as a witness to the baptism” (Canon 874)

Who Should Not Be A Godparent

You do not intend to take the duties seriously.
Are non-Catholic
Have not been baptized, confirmed and received the Eucharist.
Are not living in accord with the teachings of the Church
Are a member of a religious community
Deny some truth which “must be believed with divine and Catholic faith, or it is likewise an obstinate doubt concerning the same” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, No. 2089)
Are in an invalid marriage (outside the Church, remarried without an annulment, etc.)

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6 min read

Sacraments

Why Does the Church Baptize Babies?

John Salza

November 9, 2021 5:55 am November 9, 2021

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6 min read

The Catholic Church has been baptizing babies ever since Christ commanded His apostles to baptize all people in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit (see Mt 28:18-20)….

The Catholic Church has been baptizing babies ever since Christ commanded His apostles to baptize all people in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit (see Mt 28:18-20). This has always been the practice of the Orthodox churches and of many Protestant denominations as well.

Parents bring their babies to the waters of baptism by professing a belief in Christ on behalf of the child, and promising to raise him or her in the faith. For adults who are to be baptized,the Church also requires them to profess their faith in Christ.

Because baptism confers saving grace, the earlier a person comes to baptism, the better.

In infant baptism, then, though the child is too young to have faith, the parents extend their faith on the child’s behalf.

On what basis does the Church believe that the faith of one person may be effective on behalf of someone else? The Scriptures are full of examples in which Jesus extends healing grace to people based on the faith of others.

For example, Jesus forgives the sins of the paralytic based on the faith of those who brought him (see Mt 9:2; Mk 2:3-5).Jesus heals the centurion’s servant based on the faith of the centurion (Mt 8:5-13).Jesus exorcises the child’s unclean spirit based on the father’s faith (Mk 9:22-25).

We might also note that in the Old Testament, God spares the firstborn child’s life during the Passover based on the parent’s faith (see Ex 12:24-28).

Given these examples, then, we must ask ourselves: If God is willing to effect spiritual and physical cures for children based upon the faith of their parents, how much more will He give the grace of baptism to children based upon the faith of their parents?

Why Infants Need Baptism

Why do children need baptismal grace for salvation? Because they inherit original sin from the moment of conception.

The psalmist laments: “Indeed, in guilt was I born, and in sin my mother conceived me” (Ps 51:7).

The Book of Job observes: “Man that is born of woman is of few days, and full of trouble. … Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? There is not one” (Job 14:1,4, RSV).

The apostle Paul tells us that “through one person sin entered the world, and through sin, death” (Rom 5:12). He does not say that this sin is manifested only when the person reaches the age of reason. Rather, he writes, before baptism “we were by nature children of wrath, like the rest” (Eph 2:3).

Because babies are born with original sin, they need baptism to cleanse them, so that they may become adopted sons and daughters of God and receive the grace of the Holy Spirit. Jesus said that the kingdom of God also belongs to children (see Mt 18:4; Mk 10:14).He never put an age limit upon those eligible to receive His grace (Lk 18:15-17; Mt 18:2-5).

When St. Paul addresses the “holy ones” of the Church (see Eph 1:1; Col 1:2),these include the children, whom he addresses specifically in Ephesians 6:1 and Colossians 3:20. Children become “holy ones” of the Church and members of the body of Christ only through baptism.

Infant Baptism in the Early Church

The Scriptures also demonstrate that the early Church baptized babies. In the Book of Acts, for example, St. Peter preached to the crowd:

“Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is to you and to your childrenand to all that are far off, whomever the Lord our God will call” (Acts 2:38-39).

When St. Peter said the promise of baptism is for children, the word “children” (from the Greek teknon) also includes infants. This same word, teknon,is used later in Acts 21:21 to describe the circumcision of eight-day-old infants.

The Greek word for “household,” oikos, refers to all the members of a family, adults as well as infants and children. The Book of Acts speaks of whole households being baptized, so any infants and children who belonged to these households would have been included.

St. Paul baptizes Lydia with “her household” (16:15); the entire household of Cornelius (see 10:48; 11:14); the Philippian jailer “and all his family” (16:33); and the “household of Stephanus” (1 Cor 1:16). In none of these accounts is there ever any indication that infants and children are excluded from baptism.

Baptism and Circumcision

Finally, in any discussion of infant baptism we should remember the correlation between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant.

Under the Old Covenant, babies were circumcised when they were eight days old (see Gn 17:12; Lv 12:3). This was the sign by which they entered into the covenant.

St. Paul actually calls baptism the “new circumcision” when he writes:

“In him you were also circumcised with a circumcision not administered by hand, by stripping off the carnal body, with the circumcision of Christ. You were buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead” (Col 2:11-12).

Since baptism is the new circumcision of the New Covenant, baptism is for babies as well as adults, just as circumcision in the Old Covenant was for babies as well as adults.

God did not make his New Covenant narrower than the Old Covenant. From the perspective of the first Christians — Jews who had been part of the Old Covenant — it would have been unthinkable to exclude infants and children from God’s New Covenant. The little ones had always been part of God’s covenant family.

A covenant that excluded children would have been inferior to the original covenant. In reality, the grace of Jesus Christ and the New Covenant surpassesthat of the Old Covenant (see Rom 5:15), to include not only infants, but Gentiles as well.

God continues to extend His covenantal grace through the generations, then — not only to adults but to children as well, through the Church who offers His sacrament of baptism.

John Salza is a lawyer and the creator of ScriptureCatholic.com, a popular Catholic apologetics website. This article is adapted from his book “The Biblical Basis for the Catholic Faith” (Our Sunday Visitor, 2005).

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Sacraments

Baptism At Sunday Mass?

Father Reginald Martin

August 9, 2021 7:32 am August 9, 2021

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The Catechism of the Catholic Church Catechism devotes a chapter to the Sacraments of Initiation — that is, baptism, Eucharist and confirmation. The text remarks, “Certain essential elements will always have to be present: proclamation of the Word, acceptance of the Gospel … profession of faith, Baptism itself, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, and admission to Eucharistic communion” (No. 1229).

Whether these sacraments are conferred at one time (as is the case with adult converts) or over the course of years (as with those reared as Catholics) Christ’s death and resurrection remain the center and focus of these sacraments. Therefore, the Mass is a logical time to celebrate them, as we do each year at the Easter Vigil. Indeed, in parishes that embrace the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults, catechumens progress through a series of brief ceremonies at Mass, which allow the congregation to welcome them and acknowledge their progress in the faith.

The Catechism points out: “Baptism is the sacrament of faith. But faith needs the community of believers” (No. 1253). This is a good argument for including baptism as part of the Eucharistic celebration. However, time constraints, especially in large parishes with many infants awaiting baptism, may make such public celebration of the sacrament impractical.

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