On Pulaski Day, some fellow catechists and I ventured to the National Office of the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd to be inspired by the oldest running atria in the country. Naturally, I also perused their book selection. Much to my delight, I found a new printing of Maria Montessori's The Child in the Church. I was immediately taken with it. What wonderful inspiration!
We shall be conscious of an even deeper respect for the child when we fully realize what he represents to us after his baptism. When the child has been baptized - and therefore, his nature, contaminated by original sin, has been buried in the sepulcher of the baptismal font - and when he rises to a new life in Christ by virtue of Christ's fruitful death, then we welcome him anew. He is now reborn directly from God, participating in God's own nature, and as God's true son - called to the possession of the divine life in an ever more perfect form.
The parents who consider the child in this way will tremble with respect before him because they now see God in him. They will no longer consider the child as something begotten by themselves alone and their property to do with as they please. They will rather be vividly conscious, instead that the child belongs to God rather than to them, existing for God rather than for them, and that they have received from God's own hand this dependent and helpless infant in order that they, as God's helpers, may rear this new child of God according to the divine plan.
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