From Dale Price, a father’s reflection on the hope that those of us who have experienced the pain of miscarriage have for our unborn children. Excerpt:
I have no particular objection to Limbo. But I don’t see a problem with the theologians’ work, which simply says that parents of unbaptized children have hope.
Not a certainty, not a free pass, not happy-clappy sentimentalism and definitely not an excuse to put off the sacrament or to convert it into an ultimately-meaningless initiation ceremony, but hope.
Hope.
I don’t see where this is a problem, not when there is baptism of desire. Yes, I know that the article says only adults can have the desire for baptism. But the Tradition also demonstrates that the parents can ask of Christ what their children cannot.
There are three telling episodes in the middle of the Gospel According to St. Mark which stand out: the raising of Jairus’ daughter in Mark 5, the exorcism of the Syrophoenician woman’s little daughter in Mark 7 and the exorcism of the boy after the Transfiguration in Mark 9. In each case, the parents begged Christ in faith to heal children who were incapable of asking for His help on their own. In each case, Jesus delivered the child. We would have baptized Edmund, as we have all of our children, but that proved impossible. Now we have to ask Christ to do what we could not—in fact, to do what only He can do, whether the recipient is born or unborn. And we have hope that that will happen.
Hope is enough.
Read the whole thing here
*Wiping the tears from my eyes.*
Well said.
