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Can Infants Experience the Cross of Christ?

Mark Brumley discusses whether young children and infants, who aren’t yet able to reflect on their own experiences, can still somehow participate in Christ’s redemptive suffering as adults do when we offer up our own suffering.

Transcript:

Host: Andrea in San Antonio, Texas, listening on Guadalupe Radio. Andrea, you are on with Mark Brumley, what’s your question?

Caller: My question is, it’s actually a question that my mom had. I have a teething six-month-old.

Host: Oh, well congratulations!

Caller: Thank you. We were just–both of us were actually just wondering the other night, do children or infants, when they’re going through like growing pains and teething, like my little baby, do they experience the Cross of Christ?

Mark: Very good question. And I can say that I don’t know the answer to that. I can say that there would have been a time when I would have said, “I know the answer, that the answer is no.” And that’s a reasonable answer. I’m not saying that that’s an unreasonable answer, there are all kinds of good reasons why we might say, “No, they don’t.” But I have found, as I’ve reflected on theology and the teaching of the Church and my own experience, there are lots of things we don’t understand, and the relationship of children and grace, I think, is among those things. It’s very mysterious.

So I would not be one to say there can be no participation by a child in the redemptive sufferings of Christ when that child suffers things like growing pains or teething, so on. I wouldn’t say that it’s certain, but it’s an interesting idea. As we get older, of course, when we suffer, we can, by our by the exercise of our will, associate our sufferings with the sufferings of Christ. But when you’re talking about someone who is–someone who’s an infant, whose will is not capable of being effectuated, you know, as far as we know, and doesn’t have the physical development, so that the intellect of that child can operate and reflecting on experience and so on, is there a way in which, by God’s grace, there can be a participation that’s different from what we understand as adults?

I’m gonna say it’s possible. Is it certain? I don’t–I would say no, we don’t know, but it certainly is possible.

Host: Does that help you, Andrea?

Caller: It does, thank you so much for answering that for me.

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