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, 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 and so I would
like to try and make sense to you of 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 way back
to the beginning.
We believe that God created everything: the visible world that we
can see and the invisible world of the spirit. It says in the Bible
that the last thing that God created was the human being. That is a
biblical way of saying that we are God’s greatest creation; his
masterpiece. And God created us to enjoy life with him. It says that
God walked among them in the Garden of Eden. God was with them and
close to them. We also believe that somewhere way 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. Because of this we lost the possibility
of eternal life with God in heaven. But because God loves us so much,
He did not leave us in this situation and through the death and
resurrection of Jesus, He won back that possibility for us. Jesus
became the bridge between heaven and earth. That is why the symbol of
the crucifix is so important. 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.’
Why do we baptize a child, since a child is too small 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 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.
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. Only then would they be
baptized. When we baptize a child, we do it the other way around.
That is why the parents promise to pass on their faith as the child
grows and it is a serious promise, because it is a promise made to
God. We are saying, ‘I will be responsible for teaching my child
about all that God has done for them.
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| The baptism in the Jordan |
In the Gospels there is an account of Jesus being baptized. It
says that when it happens there was a vision of the Holy Spirit
coming down from heaven and resting on Jesus. This is showing us that
when we are baptized we receive the gift of God’s Spirit, which
enables us to live the Christian life. 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 praying 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.
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