If you stepped outside into one of our summer showers here in Florida, you would be baptized/soaked/drenched! That is what baptism means. To be immersed in, or soaked in something. I have to confess that for years I never fully understood what priests meant when they would talk about taking our baptismal promises seriously.
I would like to try and make sense to you of what baptism is and why we baptize a child, or adult. Is it just because we are Catholic and we have to? Hopefully there is more to it than that. To make sense of baptism we have to go right back to the beginning.
We believe that God created everything: the visible universe that we can see and the invisible world of the spirit, which we will see when we die. People get glimpses of it here and there through different experiences which God allows us from time to time. Why did God create us at all? We have proved to be a lot of trouble. God created us because God wanted us to share in his happiness, his fulfillment. When we have a celebration in our life—a marriage, the birth of a child, a graduation—our instinct is to reach out to others and invite them to celebrate with us, to share in our joy.
It says in the creation story in Genesis that the last thing that God created was the human being. That is a biblical way of saying that we are the most important thing God created, his masterpiece, because we are created in his image and God created us to enjoy life with him, to be completely fulfilled in every way. It says that God walked with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. God was with them and close to them. They shared in his life.
We also believe that somewhere back at the beginning, something went wrong. We don’t know exactly what happened, but we call this Original Sin. It was a rejection of God’s word and what God offered us and this is explained through the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.
God gave Adam and Eve every delight they could have, but He also gave them clear guidelines. ‘You must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you do, you will surely die’ (Gen 2:17). In other words, don’t play God. Recognize your limitations as human beings and listen to what I tell you. You must not be the ones to decide what is good and evil, what is male and female, who lives and who dies. Only God can decide these things. But instead, they listened to a lie.
Satan is cunning and he convinced them that they could be like God and that they could make these decisions themselves. This was also what Satan wanted when he rejected God. He wanted to be like God, but by his own power and not with God’s help, but because of this he lost his place in heaven. And now, out of his hatred for God, Satan tries to destroy what is precious to God, especially the human race. Satan also hates us because we can rise higher than the angels when we die, depending on how we live. Our Lady is the perfect example. Because of her openness to God and what God did through her, she is now higher than the angels, which means that they have to acknowledge that she is higher than they are and the demons hate that.
Exorcists will tell you that the demons especially hate Our Lady, because she is higher then they are and that is a great humiliation to them.
Satan convinced Adam and Eve to reject God’s word. As a result, everything fell apart. Sin entered the world, chaos followed. The generation after Adam and Eve produced the first murder. The harmony that existed between them was lost. Now they found themselves suspicious of God and there was tension between them. They were no longer at peace with themselves.
Because of this rejection of God, we lost the happiness that God created for us and the greatest catastrophe was that we had no way of winning it back, no way of undoing the damage. How could any human being make up anything to God, since we owe everything to God in the first place? But because God loves us so much, He did not leave us in this situation. He would not allow his own creation to go to ruin because of our sin.
And so, through the death and resurrection of Jesus, He won back that possibility for us. To undo the damage the sin needed to be atoned for. The atonement had to be a human offering, to make up for a human sin, but it also needed to be a divine offering, since nothing else could be acceptable to God. That is why the sacrifice of Jesus was the perfect offering, because He is both fully human and fully divine. Jesus became the bridge between heaven and earth. That is why the symbol of the crucifix is so important and so powerful. The demons hate the symbol of the crucifix, because it is the symbol of their defeat. That’s why it is also good to wear and display a crucifix, not just a cross. Through the death and resurrection of Jesus we are now offered eternal life with God, which will be our ultimate happiness.
However, God also gave us free will and so He does not force anything on us. Instead He offers eternal happiness to us, but we have to choose it. It is a gift freely offered to us. When we are baptized we are saying, ‘Yes. I believe this and I want this. I believe that God is real and that God offers me eternal happiness. I believe that God has made it possible for me to have eternal life with him and I want that. I want all that God is offering me, which has been won by the death and resurrection of Jesus. I want it all. Let me be drenched in it, soaked in it, baptized in it.’ That is why baptism is so important. So baptism is essentially a choice for what God is offering us.
If an adult came to me and asked to be baptized, first they would have to undergo several months of instruction, so that they fully understood what they were taking on. We have what is called the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults, for people who want to be baptized, or who have been baptized but haven’t made their confirmation. Every year in this diocese alone over 300 adults are baptized or make their confirmation. Last year was the biggest year ever, which is very inspiring to see. But only after they have gone through several months of instruction will they be baptized.
In the Gospels there is the account of Jesus being baptized. It says that when it happened there was a vision of the Holy Spirit coming down from heaven and resting on Jesus. Jesus didn’t need to be baptized, but He was showing us that when we are baptized we receive the gift of God’s Spirit, which enables us to live the Christian life.
Why do we baptize a child, since a child is too young to know what is going on? Shouldn’t we wait until they are old enough to make that decision themselves? The reason we baptize a child, is because we want the very best of everything for our children and especially God’s grace. We want them to be free of Original Sin from the beginning of their life. We want this promise of eternal happiness to be theirs from the start. We baptize a child on condition that we will teach them their faith as they grow up. If we don’t, then it is hypocrisy. The oil we use is a symbol of the gift of God’s Spirit.
Most of us were probably baptized as infants, when someone else spoke on our behalf. Now that we are adults, we must speak for ourselves. In a moment we will renew our promises of baptism, which is another way of professing the creed that we say each week, but we do it in the form of questions and answers. Now you are adults, listen to these questions and answer them if you believe them. Each of us must claim this for ourselves. No one else can do it for us.
The creed is like the pledge of allegiance, but we are pledging our allegiance to God and not just a country. So, the creed we profess each week is saying what we have chosen and who we believe in. That choice also affects how we live and the choices we make. If we believe what we profess, then we should live by always choosing the things that are according to God’s will. Even if the world around us rejects the ways of God, we must continue to do everything to accept the ways of God.
God so loved the world that He sent his only Son
So that everyone who believes in him may not perish, but have eternal life (Jn 3:16)
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