We have records of the event the baptism of small children in the Holy Bible.  This means that according to the Orthodox religion the little children can be baptized.

I as Father Gavril may teach incorrectly because I am sinful and I cannot absolutely acknowledge and create God’s will and truth and in everyone we can find some incorrect teaching, but in the saintly apostles we cannot.  They are direct disciples of Christ, and they have the incomparable completeness of Christ’s teaching, because of that in the symbol of the faith we confess I believe in one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.

So if the apostles have baptized children when they were little, that means that we shouldn’t have wrong opinion about that. And for those who do not teach like that the apostle Paul will say:,, That is the true of the faith, so if  I or someone else or even an  angel from the heaven should come and preach something else – this will be anathema (curse) “

The Apostle Paul baptized the whole of Stephen’s household or in other place  ‘she believed and the whole of her household was baptized.’ In many places in the Holy Bible occasions of christening are described. In that period the homes were patriarchal which means all family lived together from grandfather, great grandfather to nephew and great nephews.

We baptize little children from two reasons:

While the child is not baptized it is not a Christian and it is a slave of the devil, even if  it is a child the exorcism prayers are read for chasing the devil from the child for whom the godfather is a witness. From the moment we are baptized in the name of God we become Christians and from that moment our salvation is becoming real. The period before that moment our salvation wasn’t real.

Some people say that we have to be baptized as a grown man, who can make his own decision. What if the man dies before he has been baptized? If someone dies without being christened, as a non Christian he is not a member of Christ’s Church, for him there is no salvation, because there is no salvation outside of Christ’s Body – that is the Church. That’s why we should be baptized while we are children.

As we said before, when we are baptized we become free of sin and free of slavery to the devil. The opposite to this being that, as captives of the devil, we do not have the free will to decide. It is only through the obtaining of this blessing from the Holy Spirit that we get through our baptism that we deliver that child.

And second: The meaning of our life is to worship, and that is possible only if we are carriers of a human nature renewed by Christ and the completeness of the Holy Spirit’s Gift, and baptism is the condition for that.

The child should grow and increase spiritually in the Holy Spirit. The parents should teach the child what is good, so that the child does not accept sinful habits and passions but rather gains good habits and does good deeds so that the Grace of his Baptism is multiplied.

The meaning of this is to make our children better persons, but without baptism we cannot do this.

Why we should wait until the child grows up to give to him the Heavenly Kingdom.

Without baptism there isn’t the guardian angel to look after the child. With baptism the guardian angel will return the child to where it belongs, with God.

St. Gavril from Holy Mountain says:,, Baptism is the key to the Heavens doors”

The goal of our life is worship. Instead of keeping the grace of the  Holy Spirit we stretch ourselves and get dirty. With confession, and the help of our spiritual Father we clean the dust to from our mirror, and we can gain that mind- comfortable prayer, that is the end of the beginning.

That is what we are. You see how much God gives to us. With what we poison and lie. First we do not have love, we argue and separate, we deceive ourselves with money, after that with passion, all kind of narcotics and alcohol, perversions, bodily enjoyment in overeating. Instead of buying what we need, just how much I can eat and giving the surplus to someone who is without … as for the passion of vanity, we do everything to satisfy that passion.