How can infants repent?

[DonGoyito]

From Acts 2:38

Peter (said) to them, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you will receive the gift of the holy Spirit.”

My wife who is a non-catholic christian has this question: How can infants repent? If they cannot repent then how can they be baptized?

Thank You
Gregorio.

 

[sententia]

Someone of the age of reason, someone who can discern right and wrong, obvisouly does need to repend of their wrongs against God. Jesus is addressing a crowd here, and presumeably the adults.

Origional Sin is all that is washed away in the case of a child, as they have no personal sin to need to repent of. We have many scriptures in the bible to whole households being baptised, entire families, and not only those “of the age of reason.”

I’ll let someone else give you the more lengthy answer- and you may like this website. www.scripturecatholic.com

 

[Pentecost2005]

DonGoyito:

My wife who is a non-catholic christian has this question: How can infants repent? If they cannot repent then how can they be baptized?

Does your wife REALLY believe that Peter was preaching to the infants in the crowd? If, in fact, there were any infants in the crowd…

 

[Pentecost2005]

sententia:

Jesus is addressing a crowd here, and presumeably the adults.

Read carefully please. Peter is the one speaking. This is at Pentecost, and Jesus had ascended to heaven ten days earlier.

 

[Br.Rich_SFO]

DonGoyito:

From Acts 2:38

Peter (said) to them, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you will receive the gift of the holy Spirit.”

My wife who is a non-catholic christian has this question: How can infants repent? If they cannot repent then how can they be baptized?

Thank You
Gregorio.

An infant has no need to repent since they have no personal sins to ask forgiveness for.

 

[mercygate]

The question your wife asks is really, “what is faith?” because faith is required for repentance.

When the Church responds to the call: Repent and be baptized, she does it for the whole Church. Faith does not exist in a vacuum, nor is it limited to personal, individual belief – especially in the context of family life.

When we baptize infants, we baptize them into grace for the remission of original sin. Faith and repentance go hand-in-hand throughout one’s life at every level of cognizance and understanding.

Peter says: “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 children and to all that are far off, every one whom the Lord our God calls to him.” (Acts 2:39-39)

Moreover, in Luke 5:18-20 we see Jesus offering forgiveness to the paralytic not because of his faith or because of his own repentance, but because of the faith of those who brought him to Jesus:

And behold, men were bringing on a bed a man who was paralyzed, and they sought to bring him in and lay him before Jesus; but finding no way to bring him in, because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and let him down with his bed through the tiles into the midst before Jesus. And when he saw their faith he said, “Man, your sins are forgiven you.”

Furthermore, faith needn’t be mature. In Luke 41-44, when Mary, pregnant with the Lord, entered the house of Zechariah and Elizabeth

"the babe leaped in her womb; and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and she exclaimed with a loud cry, "Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! . . .
For behold, when the voice of your greeting came to my ears, the babe in my womb leaped for joy.

Even without full, rational faith, which would be required for full rational repentance, the babe “leaped for joy.” – That’s faith!

 

[Michael038]

Paul states in the Bible that Baptism in the New Covenant replaced Circumcission in the Old Covenant. Circumcission was generally done on the infants 7th day of life. In the Book of Acts there are accounts of Men bringing their families to the sacrament in those families there certainly would have been some babies as well. Remember nowhere in scripture does it state that infants are not allowed to be baptised and nowhere in scripture is there any mention of a specific age of reason(as many non catholics believe in). Jesus himself said bring the little ones to me.

 

[Michael038]

Often enough, those adults who were baptized by the apostles brought their families with them into the faith (cf. Acts 16:15, 16:33; 1 Cor. 1:16), an implication that baptism was not limited by the apostles to adults. It is also true enough that some early converts, such as Constantine the Great, the Roman emperor who legalized Christianity, waited until they were on their deathbeds to be baptized because baptism is a one-time only sacrament that washes away not just sin but all punishment due sin.

This was not encouraged by the Church, however. In fact, as the Church recognized the importance of baptism even for babies, one of the early Christian arguments was about how early babies could be baptized. Could they be baptized immediately after birth or did they need to wait until the eighth day, as was prescribed for circumcision under the old covenant? The Church determined that the eighth-day commandment for circumcision was not necessary for baptism and that babies could be baptized at any time after birth.

To this day, the Church still strongly encourages Catholic parents to have their children baptized as babies:

Quote:
The practice of infant baptism is an immemorial tradition of the Church. There is explicit testimony to this practice from the second century on, and it is quite possible that, from the beginning of the apostolic preaching, when whole “households” received baptism, infants may also have been baptized (CCC 1252).

As regards children who have died without baptism, the Church can only entrust them to the mercy of God, as she does in her funeral rites for them. Indeed, the great mercy of God who desires that all men should be saved, and Jesus’ tenderness toward children which caused him to say: “Let the children come to me, do not hinder them,” allow us to hope that there is a way of salvation for children who have died without baptism. All the more urgent is the Church’s call not to prevent little children coming to Christ through the gift of holy baptism (CCC 1261).

Recommended reading:

Infant Baptism
Early Teachings on Infant Baptism

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“The devil fears hearts on fire with love of God.” --St. Catherine of Siena

I thought the above info from Michele Arnold was good to include here as well.