What went wrong with the babies?

What is more harmless than the sight of a sleeping child or a smiling one? When that child is a grandchild, there is an overpowering effect—families reconcile, baby goes from ‘han to han’, the home ignites with joyous activity.

Since God Himself came to us as a baby, we really have godliness in our arms and the obligation is put on parents/guardians to grow their children so that they may be icons of Christ in the world.

But something happens by the time the child, especially the boy, becomes a late teenager or young man. By then so many of them harden. Why? Is it due to poverty? Poverty alone cannot cause this. So many citizens of stature grew up poor. What is lost along the way is “swaddling clothes.”

We are not talking about Huggies here. “Swaddling clothes” imply love, warmth, care, affirmation, patience, having someone’s back. So many homes lack these virtues.

The young are misunderstood and seen as disinterested in education. They recede into the virtual world for most of the day, thrive on ‘likes’, and become isolated and depressed.

If we add to that violence in the home and poor educational performance, we are looking at serious trauma, which if not attended to, produces in the long term maladjusted young men prone to joining gangs and increasing the violence.

Here we salute the work done by the Catholic Youth Commission, The Franciscan Institute, the Archdiocesan Family Life Commission, ecclesial communities and more recently The Samaritan Movement. These have rescued many young persons and put them on the path to self-esteem, empowerment, and employment.

Roots of our faith

In Jesus’ time, babies and children had no rights. No wonder Herod the Great slaughtered many in Bethlehem to retain power. Children could be abused and exploited at will. Much of that changed with the early Christian movement. First and second century documents record how Christians stood out for the care of the poor and children.

With high suicide ideation rates being reported among primary and secondary school children, it looks like we have turned our back as a majority Christian population on the very roots of our faith.

The prospect of war in our geopolitics should not be our only pressing concern. What about the war in our homes, the war we feel in our traumatised bodies, the war that causes profound violence because we are anaesthetised from our emotions?

Jesus is our model of the human person, not only because ofHis intimate relationship with His Father in the Spirit. He became that model also because Mary and Joseph continued to wrap Him in “swaddling clothes” from baby to early adulthood.

He needed their love, warmth, mentorship, forgiveness when He messed up, supervision over His education, which His devout parents took seriously.

The final document of the 2024 Synod emphasised “relationships” and “bonds”. The weakening of CARICOM (Caribbean Community) solidarity is linked to this same basic principle—the weakening of bonds.

If we are to celebrate peace at Christmas, hear the raucous laughter of our children, enjoy the Parang and other festivities, not as a seasonal item, but something emerging from a deeper Caribbean consciousness, we must attend to our young people, for to care for our children is to care for Christ.