Infant baptisms celebrated at St Mary’s are private ceremonies, generally outside of Mass. West Melbourne parishioners are welcome to have their children baptised in the course of Sunday Mass.

St Mary’s offers instruction all year round for adults wishing to be baptised. Adult baptisms generally occur at the Easter Vigil Mass, but they can also be arranged at other times.

In Baptism, the Heavenly Father says: “You are my child.” Baptism is adoption and admission into God’s family, into communion with the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. For this very reason, Baptism should be administered in the Name of the Most Holy Trinity. These words are not merely a formula; they are reality. They mark the moment when your children are reborn as children of God. From being the children of human parents, they also become the children of God in the Son of the living God.

But naturally, God does not act in a magical way. He acts only with our freedom. We cannot renounce our freedom. God challenges our freedom, invites us to cooperate with the fire of the Holy Spirit. These two things must go together. Baptism will remain throughout life a gift of God, who has set his seal on our souls. But it will then be our cooperation, the availability of our freedom to say that “yes” which makes divine action effective.

Pope Benedict XVI, Homily on 7 January 2007