Choice of Godparents

11/20/2013

The bap­tism of a baby, car­ried out at an ear­ly age, is an impor­tant moment, first of all, for par­ents. You need to choose god­par­ents with the utmost care — after all, accord­ing to tra­di­tion, these peo­ple will be the “sec­ond par­ents” for your child.

Sur­pris­ing­ly, many fathers and moth­ers approach the choice of god­par­ents irre­spon­si­bly. For exam­ple, it is not uncom­mon for such a role to be offered to col­leagues or supe­ri­ors. How­ev­er, the work­ing envi­ron­ment can not always be called friend­ly — such rela­tion­ships, as a rule, rarely go beyond for­mal cour­tesy and can hard­ly be main­tained when the sit­u­a­tion changes.

The church offers to choose god­par­ents accord­ing to the only cri­te­ri­on — love for the baby. After all, the sec­ond par­ents have a great respon­si­bil­i­ty — it is they who will have to sup­port, give advice or pro­vide any oth­er sup­port in case it is need­ed. In fact, god­par­ents are spir­i­tu­al men­tors, so in no case is it nec­es­sary to choose them hasti­ly, as well as fol­low tra­di­tions — par­ents should be guid­ed, first of all, by the heart.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, today the rite of bap­tism is rather a trib­ute to fash­ion. Nei­ther the par­ents nor the god­par­ents take this seri­ous­ly. There­fore, it is not uncom­mon for the same per­son to have sev­er­al recip­i­ents, to whom, as a result, he can­not pay due atten­tion. The com­mu­ni­ca­tion of chil­dren with god­par­ents is often lim­it­ed to only rare vis­its on hol­i­days, which means that there is no ques­tion of any spir­i­tu­al enlight­en­ment.

When choos­ing god­par­ents, the exist­ing church canons should also be tak­en into account. In par­tic­u­lar, it is for­bid­den to act as god­par­ents to unbe­liev­ers or unbap­tized peo­ple, minors, the men­tal­ly ill, immoral, and so on. In addi­tion, par­ents can­not become god­par­ents for their own chil­dren, and a mar­ried cou­ple can­not be cho­sen as god­par­ents. God­par­ents must also want to per­form this rite, so their desire has a direct role. In some places, a preg­nant woman can­not become a god­moth­er.

How­ev­er, the choice of sec­ond par­ents is a pure­ly moral issue. Mom and dad should choose god­par­ents in such a way that they can be count­ed on in a dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tion and that their advice can real­ly sup­port the child through­out his life. That’s why you can’t trust just any­one on such a mis­sion.