BAPTISM OF THE LORD

WHAT IS BAPTISM?

Baptism of the Lord, Year C.  Luke 3:15-16, 21-22.

AIM: To explain the significance of baptism.

 

King Louis IX of France, for whom our city is named, used to sign official documents not ALouis IX, King@, but ALouis of Poissy.@ Asked why, he replied: APoissy is the place where I was baptized. That is more important to me than the Cathedral of Rheims, where I was crowned. It is a greater thing to be a child of God than to be ruler of a kingdom: this last I shall lose at death; but the other will be my passport to everlasting glory.@ The humility and faith which those words express help us understand why the Church enrolled Louis IX in its list of saints. 

When did you last hear a sermon on baptism? Possibly you recall some remarks on the subject at a baptism you attended. Otherwise, sermons on baptism are rare these days. That is unfortunate, for baptism, the Catechism tells us, Ais the basis of the whole Christian life, the gateway to life in the Spirit, and the door which give access to the other sacraments.@ (No. 1213) 

Few of us can remember our own baptism. For most of Christian history people have normally been baptized as infants. This was not always so. Scholars tell us that in the first decades after the resurrection the normal practice was adult baptism. Only from the second century, the Catechism says, is there explicit testimony to infant baptism, though Ait is quite possible that, from the beginning of the apostolic preaching, when whole >households= received baptism, infants may also have been baptized.@ (No. 1252) To understand baptism properly, therefore, we need to start with what was originally the norm: adult baptism. 

If you have witnessed the baptism of adults during the Easter Vigil liturgy, you may recall the questions put to the candidates. The Church asks them to declare publicly their faith in Jesus Christ, and to reject all that is opposed to him and his teaching. Only when they have personally confessed this faith can they be baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and Holy Spirit. 

Faith is the one essential which the Church requires of every candidate for baptism. This remains true whether the candidate is a so-called catechumen B someone old enough to be receiving instruction in the faith B or an infant. The Catechism explains: ABaptism is the sacrament of faith. But faith needs the community of believers. It is only within the faith of the Church that each of the faithful can believe. The faith required for Baptism is not a perfect and mature faith, but a beginning that is called to develop. The catechumen or the godparent is asked: >What do you ask of God=s Church?= The response is: >Faith!=@ (No. 1253)       

Parents of a newborn will sometimes tell their Pastor: “Father, we’d like to get the baby done.” They are thinking of baptism as something like vaccination. The proper comparison for baptism is not vaccination but birth. Just as our birth makes us members of the human family and children of a particular pair of parents, so baptism makes us members of God=s family, the Catholic Church. Baptism, the Catechism says, Amakes us members of the Body of Christ ... [and] incorporates us into the Church.  From the baptismal font is born the one People God of the New Covenant, which transcends all the natural or human limits of nations, cultures, races, and sexes: >For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body.=@ (No. 1267).

AThe two principal effects@ of baptism, the Catechism says, A are purification from sins and new birth in the Holy Spirit.@ Baptism is called spiritual rebirth because it gives us a new nature. The human nature we inherit from our parents is, as the theologians say, Afallen.@ That means that it is not what God meant it to be in his original plan of creation. We experience this every day. From the age of reason we can distinguish right from wrong. We know in our hearts that we should choose good and reject evil. Yet how often we do the opposite. 

At baptism we receive a new nature: the nature of the perfect man, Christ Jesus. To the extent that we lay hold of this gift, using and developing it, we are able to rise above the inclination to evil that lurks within each of us. Laying hold of the new Christ-life given us at baptism requires faith. Babies and small children are incapable of faith. That is why, at infant baptism, the Church requires that faith be expressed by someone who is capable of it: a parent or godparent. They must promise that the child is given a Christian upbringing and every opportunity of making a personal decision for Jesus Christ when old enough to do so. 

People sometimes object that this means forcing on children something they have not chosen, and may never choose. Interestingly, we never hear this objection in other areas. Little children do not always choose to eat the food we give them.  And how many would go willingly to school, if allowed to choose for themselves?  Yet how many people would favor feeding youngsters candy and ice cream until they were old enough to choose a balanced diet? And how much support is there for postponing schooling until children choose it for themselves? 

We give children the best nourishment for their bodies and minds, because we recognize this as our duty. We have the same duty to give them the best spiritual nourishment we know. For Catholics this means bringing them up in our holy Catholic faith. In time young people will make their own decisions about faith, and other matters as well, whether we like it or not. All of us, but parents especially, have an obligation to help them choose wisely and well, especially by the example of our own lives. 

At Jesus= baptism, today=s gospel tells us, a voice came from heaven, saying: AYou are my beloved Son, with you I am well pleased.@ The same words sounded from heaven when each of us was baptized. Today, on this feast of his baptism, Jesus Christ is asking every one of us to recall what we are, and to live as what we are: God=s dearly loved daughters and sons, in whom he is well pleased.