The Sacrament of Baptism

What's Your Next Step? Remember Your Baptism.

Baptism is God’s life abiding in us. It is more than an event -- it is a transformative reality. To understand what this means, we might compare it to marriage.

We talk about marriage in two ways. Marriage is what takes place on THE DAY -- the exchange of vows, the celebration, the kiss. But marriage is what takes place every day after that. Marriage is what the marriage ceremony is for. Marriage is a ritual that expresses and initiates a new way of life. Baptism is exactly like this. Baptism is the ritual washing of a person responding in faith to the Gospel in the name of the God we worship as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But baptism is the new life that flows from God’s compassionate gift of Jesus to the world. You were baptized on that day, but your baptism continues to operate in you, through you -- because your baptism is the Holy Spirit living out God’s life in you.

Baptism is the public and visible sign of the beginning of our Christian journey. As we tell the story of God saving us, this story takes an immense leap forward when we come to the event of our baptism. Before baptism, our story is about what it's like to get by on our own. Even if we were baptized as infants, our story begins with a baby who has the assurance of her parents, maybe her community, but no ultimate assurance that the universe is a friendly place. But in baptism, God reaches out and assures us, "Yes, you are mine. I've got you. You will fall. You will fail. You will break. But I will pick you up, I will make up for your failures, I will heal you completely. You will never be alone, because I am delighted with you." We can count on this promise, because Jesus counted on it, and God raised Jesus from the dead. 

• Take a minute and remember your baptism. (If you're a catechumen, you'll have to remember  ahead, into the future.) For those of you baptized as infants, do your best to bring to mind all the details you can remember from stories and pictures of your baptism. Who was there? Who baptized you? What was the baptism like? A dunking? A trickle of water? 
• To prepare yourself for the discussion of baptism and confirmation on Sunday, try to share these memories with your sponsor. Ask your sponsor about her or his own baptism. Compare your stories: what do they have in common, and how are they different? What makes your baptism a meaningful event in the history of your life?
• Finally, take another minute and consider this: Catholics baptize babies, we baptize adults, and we recognize non-Catholic baptisms. What does this say to you about the nature and extent of God's Church?

Here are some additional points to ponder:

1. The Risen Christ lives God’s own life. The whole point of the Christian life is to live God’s own life, and this life has been given not to individuals but to the body of believers united by faith and the sacraments.
2. Sacraments are God acting through the Church’s symbolic actions. Sacraments involve a showing, and a saying. 
3. Baptism shows us something: a washing (forgiveness of sin), and a going down and coming up (sharing the resurrected life of Christ, now). 
4. And its saying expresses an intention: “I baptize you” (I intend to do what Christians mean when they baptize) “in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”
5. But baptism doesn’t stop when we come out of the water. It endures. We are changed, for we are members of the baptized. Your baptism, everything flowing from it, is happening right now. -- sacramental character
6. In baptism God sends the Spirit to transform the whole person of the believer and incorporate the believer into his sacramental body, through which he has chosen to be active. 
7. Baptism forgives sin. In baptism, we are linked, materially, to the baptismal waters that Jesus made holy in his own baptism, and we are linked to Jesus’ own body. This joining to Jesus’ body in faith and baptism means that our sins no longer separate us from God
8. Baptism disposes us to participate in the Eucharist, to share in the communion of God’s life in the Church. This obligates us to the community of the Eucharist, to live in such a way that we’re living not for ourselves but for others, because that’s what Eucharist is -- an outpouring of self for others in gratitude to God.
9. The risen Christ sends his Spirit to all mankind by way of the deepest recesses of human personality and human community. The Church is the place where Christ’s word and sacraments are explicitly recognized and celebrated. And the grace associated with all the sacraments is expressed most fully in the Church's Eucharist.