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.
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, which we will see when we die. 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 the most important thing God created; his masterpiece and God created us to enjoy life with him, to be completely fulfilled in every way. It says that God walked among Adam and Eve 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. God gave Adam and Eve 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 and listen to what I tell you. But they listened to a lie instead. They allowed themselves to be persuaded not to listen to God’s word and in fact to reject it. 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 biggest problem 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. And so, through the death and resurrection of Jesus, He won back that possibility for us. To undo the damage, the offering had to be a human offering, to make up for a human sin, but it also needed to be 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. 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.
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 us.
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. 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.
Does that mean that those who are not baptized cannot go to heaven? Of course not. For us it is necessary, because this is what has been revealed to us, but that doesn't mean that it is the only way. For those who have not known Jesus, what is important is that they live by the ways of God as they understand him. Even for those who have no idea of God, God speaks to them through their conscience, so no one can say they didn't know what was right and wrong. But for us who have understood what God has revealed to us through Jesus, it is necessary. To reject what God has revealed to us is to reject 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)
The Word became flesh
And lived among us (Jn 1:14)
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