The Church Renewed at the Font

Infant Baptism in the Ecclesial Vision of the Zairean Rite

Abstract

Catholic tradition teaches that an infant is baptised in the faith of the Church. Born anew of water and the Spirit, the child is incorporated into the Body of Christ. Yet recognising the ecclesial character of baptism does not by itself explain what this incorporation effects in the identity and life of the Church that receives the child. This article argues that at the baptismal font Christ not only incorporates the child into his body but also renews the Church by deepening her fidelity to her own calling. It develops this claim through the ecclesial vision of the Missel romain pour les diocèses du Zaïre (1989), known as the “Zairean Rite”, whose pattern of gathering, listening, celebrating, and witnessing embodies a Church-Family shaped by Scripture, Catholic tradition, and African and Congolese wisdom. In this wisdom, life is received from God, personhood is constituted relationally, and the birth of a child increases the vital force of the whole community. Although the Rite has so far provided only an order of Mass, its ecclesial vision, brought to the font, serves as a fruitful hermeneutic of infant baptism. In this light, each child received at the font enlarges the Church’s communion, deepens her maternal responsibility, and reawakens her missionary vocation, so that she becomes ever more fully the family she is called to be.