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Before asking someone to accept this wonderful role, please take to heart the following from the Catechism, as the requirements can only be understood in this light. What is said below of godparents is equally applicable to Confirmation Sponsors. A good video is listed below as well.
Baptism into Christ
Holy Baptism is the basis of the whole Christian life….According to the Apostle Paul, the believer enters through Baptism into communion with Christ's death, is buried with him, and rises with him: “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.” (Rom 6:3-4) (CCC 1213)
Infant Baptism
Born with a fallen human nature and tainted by original sin, children also have need of the new birth in Baptism to be freed from the power of darkness and brought into the realm of the freedom of the children of God…The sheer gratuitousness of the grace of salvation is particularly manifest in infant Baptism. The Church and the parents would deny a child the priceless grace of becoming a child of God were they not to confer Baptism shortly after birth. (CCC 1250)
Important Role of Godparents
For the grace of Baptism to unfold, the parents' help is important. So too is the role of the godfather and godmother, who must be firm believers, able and ready to help the newly baptized - child or adult on the road of Christian life. (CCC 1255)
All this being central to our faith, three things need be stressed.
- Godparents promise before God that they commit to assisting the parents in raising their child in the Catholic Faith. This means that along with standing up in truth, their lives must be an example to the child. This is no small matter. This doesn’t mean that they are perfect – no one in the Church is – but rather they believe, regularly worship, and try to live a life in keeping with Life in Christ. It’s nice to want Uncle John or Aunt Mary because we’re close to them, but it is key to know they are taking on an eternal and supernatural role that intensifies that already beautiful human relationship.
- Thus, the persons must show the habit of practicing their faith and have received the three Sacraments of Initiation into the Church (Baptism, Eucharist, and Confirmation). It would be odd and frowned upon if a sponsor of a person’s membership in a country club were not a member himself.
- Sometimes parents want to ask very fine and virtuous persons who are of another faith (Jewish, Muslim, Hindu). And sometimes parents are upset that they cannot be approved. But besides not making sense, it is unfair to ask them to profess the baptismal vows of belief in God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the death and resurrection of Christ, etc. Either they would have to lie, or the Church would be stating that the revelation given by Jesus means nothing.
All of this being said, parents and prospective godparents, please take this to heart. It is a beautiful thing to be asked and a beautiful role to fulfill – an honor and a responsibility. Above all, it is living and sharing life in Christ and his Church with another person for whom the Lord came and gave himself.
Blessings,
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