The children who die unbaptized for reasons beyond the will of their parents or of the priests, can be considered as sharing the baptism of the will like the righteous people from the Old Testament or by analogy with the healings made by Jesus Christ and answering the prayers of the parents or friends.
Because God doesn’t punish the innocent, but on the contrary, because He created the man for happiness. However the parents of these children will confess, they will receive a canon in accordance with their care or recklessness. Meaning to baptize or raise a poor child, to visit a holy place, to give alms, make prostrations, fast etc.
Here is what saint Chiril of Jerusalem in the third Catechesis, chapter 10: `If someone doesn’t receive the baptism, he doesn’t find his salvation, excepting the martyrs who receive the Eucharist without water (baptism). The Savior when He saved the world by Cross and His rib was speared from it flowed blood and water to baptize with His blood all those who are baptized by persecutions. The Savior calls martyrdom as baptism because He says: `Can you drink the cup I drink or be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with?` (Mark 10, 38). The martyrs made their confessions of faith in front of the world, the angels and the men (I Cor. 4, 14).
The VIth Ecumenical Council, in canon 83 says: `The dead cannot be baptized or communed.` Thus the aborted children, born prematurely, lost unwillingly or who die immediately after birth without receiving the baptism, cannot be baptized after death because they are dead. They cannot be mentioned in the church because they are not baptized and they don’t have names. They are not members of the Church of Christ. For those who are willingly killed by their parents the entire responsibility belongs to the parents. In the Church Codex of archimandrite Nicodim Sachelarie cap.232 we read the following about this: `For the aborted children, those who die unbaptized there is no teaching found (not in the Holy Scripture nor at the Holy Fathers) because the life of men, of the adults and of the unchristian children is in the hand of their Creator, Who cannot be compelled to reveal His entire providence to the mortals willing to know what it is of no use for them. The call of His voice resounds all the time in the world and those who hear it have the duty to answer only in the given measure of their understanding. Of course God doesn’t punish those who don’t know His laws, especially the children who die unbaptized. On the contrary. He created the man for happiness thus the children who couldn’t use their free will and power for the aim for which the man was created He blesses them for their life just as they praise Him for the same innocent and beautiful life but they are not rewarded for merits, since they don’t have any virtuous deeds.
Natural happiness is given by God directly and necessarily without being needed the effort of man or without being talked about it among men and revelation shows us only that happiness to which the man contributes himself. (II Cor. 12, 4; Apoc. 21, 22).
The Codex of Matei Basarab, in chapter 153, says about the unbaptized children: „And all those children of the Christians and of the pagans alike don’t go to the Kingdom of heaven nor to hell, but to a bright place. And when they are baptized the skies that were shut by Adam by his disobedience open again, as they opened when our Lord Jesus Christ came on earth and He gave the gift of the Holy Baptism to the world. (Ibidem, 154).
„Elder Cleopa Ilie speaks to us”, Volume 5, p. 35-38
