Talking about Baptism

As with so many other Catholic practices, baptism is so full of significance that one is spoilt for choice for themes to talk to children about.  When you have such a wide choice of themes, it is easy to get lost when trying to impart as much as possible to the children.  However, it is important to keep focus on a small number of themes which you can string together into a single coherent message within the time frame given.

I would like to share the ones I normally use, which I hope you may find useful.  Each concept that I outline below should take no more than two minutes to summarise, excluding the answers from the children before your summary.

Two families
Children I have facilitated would be used to the concept of belonging to two families.  Still it is fun to introduce this concept to children.  You start by asking whether they know that they belong to two families.  You will get answers like the family at home, and cousins or grandparents, etc.

Lead them to understand that there is the family at home and the family of God's.  You need to clarify this by drawing parallels between them.  Just as the family at home has Mom and Dad as the head of the family, you also have God as the head of God's family.  Children need something familiar to liken a new concept to if they were to quickly understand it.  A hook, you may say.

Draw more parallels if you need to: You find the family at home in the house; You find God's family in church.  The family at home gather for dinner at the dining table; God's family gather for mass at the altar.  Etc, etc.

How do you join both families
Once they are comfortable with the concept, move on to asking them how they joined the family at home.  Well, you get born.  Talk about the birthday - not the birthday party but the very first birthday that a baby had.  Of course they wouldn't remember their own birth but you can let them talk about the birth of a younger sibling or cousin.  Talk about the number of people who got involved, what they did to prepare and the fuss that greeted the baby when the baby arrives home.  Also, the baby is given a name after birth, often the name is prepared before birth.

Now, how did you join God's family?  Well, you get baptised. Now work on those parallels.  Just as you have lots people around who loves you when you are born (here, I am talking about the family members greeting the baby at home, not the doctors and nurses in the hospital), you also have lots of people around who love you when you get baptised.  I mean, you can't imagine the baby going up to the church alone, knocking on the church doors and asking the priest to get baptised.  Go through the people who are normally there at the baptism.  The baby getting baptised has to be there, the parents who brought the baby there, the priest who conducts the baptism, the family members and well wishers; and last but not least, the godparents.

Godparents
Explain the role of godparents.  First, they stand in for the parents if anything happens to them.  More importantly in the Church, a godparent ensures the godchild understands the faith and is living the live of a Christian Catholic.

The following need not be explained in detailed to the children but helps your understanding (and confidence) if you were to explain to the children.

In the Catholic Church, godparents are called sponsors.  An adult's baptism will describe this a little better.  You see, the baptism is a bit like joining a society (of course, in a baptism, the benefits extend beyond life on earth).  Before you join a society, you need to understand what the society stands for and what it does; how it does what tit does and the people in the society.  The society also need to vet your application to make sure you understand all this and that you are suitable to join them.

In the same way, the sponsor leads the catechumen (the person getting baptised) into an understanding of what the Church stands for, what we believe in and how we live our faith.  As the Catholic faith is also a way of life of a community of people, the sponsor also leads the catechumen into the life of community, and to know the members of the community.

Names
Explain to the children that when a child is brought up to the priest to be baptised, the priest will ask the parents, "What name do you give this child?" and the parents will answer with the name of the child.  It is important to note that this is the first time the name of the child Is called out in the church.

You see, every member of the community of God needs to know the name of the new member and this is the first time the name of the child is heard by the community.  Therefore the name has to be called out loud.

Draw the parallel with the family at home.  In the family at home, wouldn't every member of the family know the name of every other member?  In the same way this is how the family of God know each others name.

Normally at this point I asked each child what their parents said when the priest asked them for the names at their baptism.  This is one fun way we can use to get everyone to share their names.  I usually do this for the feast of the Baptist of the Lord to start of the year by introducing new members.

Meaning of names
In the olden days, people give names to the children that have deep significance either in meaning or because it was the name of an important personality.  For instance a girl called Felicity is intended to grow up happy because that is what the word felicity means in Latin.  Alternatively you could be given a name of someone famous in the past because your parents hope that you will grow up to be like that person.  Boys called Solomon should be wise.

It is rather unfortunate that today people give names to children that sounds nice but devoid of any historical context or significance.  In the Catholic Church, we often give children the name of a saint because we hope that the child will take on the qualities of that saint.

You do not need to explain all these details to the children but you'll be good to have a book of names or, in today's world an app on your handphone, that can explain the names of the  children as they bring them up.

Interestingly there are many variations of the same name  that come from different countries.   For instance, John is Uwen in Wales, Ian in Scotland, Shaun in Ireland, Johan in Holland, Jon in Scandinavia, Hans in Germany, Jan in Poland, Ivan in Russia, Jean in France, Juan in Spain and oddly, Giovanni in Italy. (Italians do not have a J in their alphabet) I once ran through all this with one boy named John and at every country, the other children greeted him with that variation.  At the end of the grand tour, the poor boy had an identity crisis!  But it was fun.

A name we all share
Ask the children whether they know that we were given an additional name at our baptism. Well, it is not the second name or middle name.  All of us were given that same name at our respective baptism.

That name is Christian.  And whose name is it in the name Christian?  It is Jesus' name - Jesus Christ.  And when we all given the name Christian we are all expected take on the qualities of Jesus.  So after our baptism when we all get our additional name and everyone call Christian, we have to follow what Jesus did.

Water - the practical reason
After hearing the name, the priest will pour holy water over the head of the baby and says the words, "With this water I baptize you (so and so) in the name of the Father and the Son and Holy Spirit."  Ask the children why the priest uses water for baptism?  What is so special about water?  What will happen if we do not have any water?  Well we die - a person can live for weeks without food but will die a few days without water.  We use water to keep clean to bath and to wash our clothes.  We also use water to keep us healthy - without water, we fall sick.

That is why we use water for baptism.  Water symbolizes to us new life, spiritual health and a clean soul.

Water - the spiritual reason

That is another very big significant reason why we use water.  Ask the children to think of two stories in the Bible where the there were lots of water.  Jesus turning water into wine? No, more than that!  Jesus' baptism?  No, even more than that.  Try Noah & the Ark and Moses leading the Israelites through the Red Sea.

In both these cases, there is something very interesting about what water did.  In the story of Noah, the waters of the Flood drowned all the sinners in the world who was the reason why God sent the Flood.  And the waters saved the good people - Noah and his family and all the animals.  In the story of Moses, the waters of the Red Sea killed the Pharaoh's army chasing Moses and saved the Israelites.  So we say that water kills the bad people and save the good ones.

In very much the same way we use water in baptism.  Traditionally, we used to baptise by immersion.  Some Catholic churches & many non-Catholic ones still do that.  When we baptise by immersion, the catechumen is immersed into a bug tub or pool of holy water and then brought up.

Ask the children what would happen if you were to hold him under the water.  The person dies.  Of course in baptism we don't hold a person under the water that long - we bring them up very quickly.  But by putting the person under the water, we say that the person who dies is the one who did all the bad things and it is a new person who comes out of the water.  Water kills the sinner and gives life to a new Christian.

Conclusion

Therefore in conclusion, the message to the children that should stick with them at the end of the session is that - after their baptism, they are new Christian, cleaned and made healthy with a new life.  After our baptism, we all carry the name of Christ in our hearts and we should go out and share the qualities of Christ with everyone.

Talking to children

Talking to children is a tricky affair for most adults.  Most adults speak to children the way they speak to another adult albeit in a slower, sing-song voice with plenty of exaggerated tones you don't hear in an adults conversation.  In many cases, the content of what we say are largely attempts to bring them into an adult's world as quickly as possible, to equip them to interact in our world.  At times, I find it a little condescending.

It is unfortunate that many adults have forgotten what it was like to be a child.  Truthfully, though, there are physiological reasons for this forgetfulness.  Apparently, a child's ability to constantly learn is based on a child's brain deleting memories to make way for new ones.  Which, explains why we lose most of our memories of very early childhood even as we  remember memories from just a few years later with clear vividness.

Children do not listen and understand in the way adults do.  For one thing, they have much shorter attention spans.  Also, when a child's brain gets bombarded by many new imageries as in a complicated idea, the child's brain seems to blank out those ideas that it does not understand and focus on those that they do.  There is only so much time to process these ideas before the next one comes in.  As a result, such selective understanding of a complicated message may result in an incorrect understanding of the message.

Another principle is that, in common with adults, we all learn better when we are thinking through the concept rather than passively listening to it.

I have been working with children in the Church for three decades (has it been that long??).  There has been plenty of time to analyse how complicated church doctrines can be reduced to simple terms that children can digest.  Plenty in the armoury of how to explain these complicated church doctrines to children.

I, therefore, would like to share with you some principles of talking to children that I and others have found successful.  In particular, I would like to focus on sharing the Sunday Gospel with children, which is the aim of this blog. 

Discovery
Many adults tend to be rather didactic when talking to children.  That was how our parents talked to us.  However, the world has inexorably moved on.  We now realised that children now need to explore and understand on the basis of their own personal voyage of discovery.  Not just children but adults too and that has spawned a whole new practice in the corporate world called coaching.

I apply the concept of coaching by asking the children leading questions and prompting them with those questions to the direction I intend for the discussion to go. This requires a lot of preparation as a series of questions need to be prepared with variations planned if different answers takes you down different paths of discussions.  You also need to enjoy repartees as such sessions depend very much on children being willing to give you answers, or insist on a particular point of view.  And who knows what children will say when given the freedom to do so.

But believe me, it is worth it.  Sometimes discussions go into areas where we do not expect.  But such discussions tend to be very rich as it focuses on a topic that the children wanted to know.  We just have to leave it to the Holy Spirit to lead the discussions.

As a rule of thumb I find the sessions successful if the children spoke 80% of the time.  Some faith educators, sadly, find this threatening to their role.  In such discussions, my role is limited to summarising all the input from the children into a single coherent and simple idea that they will take all along with them.  This summary is important and should be a single idea delivered in no more than two sentences with full emphasis.  This sends the children off for the week with that one idea in their head.

Attention
We live in a world of sound bites.  Today's children are used to ideas being delivered to them in small chunks that they can absorb in the short time as they flit from one activity or thought to another.  More so in today's world of targeted advertising, fast moving computer games and short messages on phones & laptops.

Concepts have to be packed in small stand-alone packages.  Such packages should be limited to no more than two minutes.  This will enable children to understand the concept in the short time even if their attention wanders.  This, by the way, also applies to adults.  I have ran talks with people who walk in and out of the room.  Even in such situations, attendees can understand a single concept as long as they are there for those two minutes.  Because each package is delivered as a stand-alone, the listener does not need to know what came before and what came after.

An example of a stand-alone package that I use is the link from carnivals to Ash Wednesday.  The famous Carnival is the one in Rio de Janeiro, held on the weekend before Ash Wednesday from Friday to Tuesday.  This is a great party in which everyone had a jolly good time and eat what they want to eat before the fasting begins on Ash Wednesday. Carnival comes from two words - "carni" which means "meat" as in "carnivore" and "levare" which means "to put away".  So carnival is "putting away meat" which is how the people of Rio choose to put away meat before the fasting begins in Lent, when no meat is consumed for the forty days in Lent in times past.  See the children's eyes widen when I tell them that under rules of olden days, they cannot have MacDonald's for forty days!!

Now, after I tell you this, I am sure whenever the carnival comes on TV every year, you will always remember that in the past, meat is never consumed during Lent.

Relevance
Concepts you want to have to get across to the children must be relevant to the children.  It is no use talking to them in adult concepts.  All concepts must be translated into everyday children experience that they encounter at home and in school. For that, we need to view the world from the eyes of a child.  No point telling them things that will be relevant to them in the future ("When you get married one day when you are older, you should .....").  Children have too many everyday things to worry about today without having to keep something in mind for a later date.

So, paraphrase concepts and words from the Catechism with ideas that mean something to the children.  We do not talk about sins but we talk about doing wrong.  We do not talk about crimes such as murder but we talk about taking cookies before dinner even after Mom has told us not to.  You are not watering down the Catechism when you do so, but rather you are throwing light on them.  If you don't find an idea that would be relevant to the children, maybe it is not yet time to talk to them about it.  We don't need to discuss the Seventh Commandment with five-year-old children, for instance.

One variation of this idea is to draw parallels between a concept that they understand and a concept that you want to get across.  Drawing parallels are a great tool as it forms an easy bridge for them to get from something they understand well to something new.  Still, as with all allegories, parallels have their limits and you need to ensure the mirrors are not exact.  Otherwise, you could end up with very hilarious conclusions.

An example: You get the concept of the Church across by explaining that we belong to two families.  The family at home, where Mom and Dad are the heads; and the family of the Church, where God is the head.  Many other concepts can emanate from this understanding.  For instance, just as the family at home gather round the dining table for dinner, the family of the Church gather round the altar for mass.  And both tables have many things in common: they both have a cloth over it (tablecloth/altar cloth).  They both have something in the middle taking the pride of place (the main course/bread and wine).  You can see how you can take this on and on.



In future blogs, I hope to expand on these principles with more concrete examples.  I hope they help.  Let me know what you think of them.

Talking about stories

Our Christian faith is a faith of stories.  Nothing characterised this aspect of our faith more than the Easter midnight liturgy.  Seven readings of the salvation of our people told over a fire.  It always remind me of the chats and stories over a campsite fire.  A young child hears the story of the deliverance at the Red Sea and the faith has been handed down one more generation.

Stories are how our faith have been handed down.  The Bible is a book of stories, originally handed down the generations by word of mouth.  Such stories form the basis of our understanding of truth, as expressed in our faith.  Some stories are physically ordinary while others physically miraculous.  Both contribute equally to the truth of our faith and both are used to illuminate our lives.

In a modern society, however, which equates facts as truth, stories that are not factually feasible like parables and fables are shunned as a scientifically logical society glances ashamedly to what it sees as its superstitious past.  I find it strange that some English-speaking cultures shuns stories while others embrace it.  For instance, Irish (and other Gaelic cultures) notions of humour tends to be anecdotal while English humour less so.  Stories seem to be an embarrassment to some.

But just as science and faith inhabit different spheres, facts and truth are not necessarily the same thing.  Facts are physical records of what actually happened, verifiable by reason or experience. Truth, on the other hand, tells us about ourselves and what we need to do to give meaning to our lives, as informed by our understanding of events, factual or otherwise.  Truth can sometimes come from a non-fact, and is not a lesser truth of as result of it.  For instance, we all accept that sometimes, slow and steady does win the race.  That doesn't mean that we all believe that a hare and a tortoise met up and agreed to run a race that resulted in the saying.

Truth therefore can come from stories that may not be factual.  Or rather to be more accurate, truth does not depend on how factual the the story is.  Should we therefore be worried about how factual are stories that we share with our children.  No, stories that we share are the stories of our faith, which tells us who we are and the type of people we all seek to be.  We educate our children with the stories we tell.  With that, we hand down the truth of who we are and how we would like to be known so that the chain of faith finds one more link to the next generation.