In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.
May the Lord give you His peace.
A week ago we celebrated the Feast of the Epiphany,
in which we recalled the revelation of the Christ child to the Gentiles,
represented by the three wise men who came from the East,
bearing gifts for their God and King.
Today we commemorate the baptism of our Lord,
and it's a kind of continuation of the mystery of the Epiphany,
because this too is a revelation of Christ.
This time it's a revelation to His disciples,
gathered together there at the Jordan,
and in particular to the apostles,
whose mission it will be to proclaim the mystery of Christ to the whole world,
bringing them to the waters of baptism.
This mystery of the baptism of our Lord has been often misunderstood down through the ages,
especially by groups that don't accept the true doctrine of the Church.
Some people have claimed that our Lord was adopted,
at this point, that He was just a creature beforehand,
and then He suddenly became God,
which of course is absurd,
because if you were not God at one point,
then you never will be God.
Through baptism we become divinized,
we become sharers in the divine life,
but that doesn't mean that we are God.
God and creature always remain distinct.
What happens at the baptism of our Lord is that
He descends into the waters,
not to be purified,
purified and sanctified by them since He's God,
but rather that He may purify and sanctify the waters.
Our Lord, touching the waters with His divine humanity,
confers His own power upon them,
and He makes the waters the instrument for our sanctification.
There's a beautiful symbolism in the baptism of our Lord,
of the whole paschal mystery, right?
Our Lord descends into the waters,
and then He arises again,
just as at His death on Good Friday,
He descends into the depths of the earth,
into the limbo of the just,
and then on the third day He arises again,
to new life on Easter Sunday.
And we, through our baptism,
participate in this paschal mystery, right?
We go down into the waters,
dying mystically together with our Lord,
and then we rise from the waters,
mystically with our Lord,
and this is our first resurrection.
And by that first resurrection,
we too can hear the words that were spoken at the Jordan.
This is my beloved Son,
in whom I'm well pleased,
because a new birth takes place
when we arise from the waters of baptism.
We descend into the waters as children of wrath,
and we rise up as children of God.
We descend as vessels
of the devil, you might say,
and we arise from the waters of baptism
as vessels of the Most Holy Trinity.
In fact, it's impossible to enumerate
all the many effects and benefits
of our baptism.
By baptism, we're purified from original sin.
We're set free from the power of the devil.
By baptism, we become temples of the Holy Trinity.
God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit
comes to dwell within our souls.
By baptism, we become partakers of the divine life,
participants in the divine nature,
so that we can truly be called sons of God.
This is a rebirth which is actually more intimate
than an ordinary human adoption.
In a human adoption,
there's no change that takes place in your nature.
You might say it's a legal act
by which a couple,
who generously chooses to take someone else's child
as their own
and to raise that child as their own.
But there isn't actually a change that takes place
in the nature of the child.
Whereas our adoption is something much deeper,
more beautiful and mysterious than that
because we actually become children of God,
not just in a legal sense.
God doesn't just take us into his heart,
you might say,
but we actually become sharers in his nature.
The divine nature comes to dwell in us,
so that in a very real and true sense,
we can be called sons of God.
A new birth takes place there,
more beautiful than the one that took place
on our first birthday.
Our baptism is also our entrance into the church.
If you recall in the rite of baptism,
the rite typically begins outside of the church building,
in the foyer or outside of the building altogether.
And then progressively,
the child and the people accompanying him
enter into the church.
And it symbolizes the whole journey that we make
from being outside of God's family
to entering into God's family
and actually being members of the mystical body of Christ.
By that entrance into the church,
we also have the right to all of the other graces
and the fruits that are enjoyed in the church.
That's the gateway to the other sacraments.
It's through baptism that we're able to enter
and we're able to also be confirmed,
that we're able to receive Holy Communion,
that we can be washed of our subsequent sins
through confession,
that we can contract a sacramental marriage,
that we can receive the last rites,
that we can be ordained to holy orders
for those who are called.
And so it's the gateway to the whole life of the church.
And it's precisely for this reason
that it's so important that we baptize,
especially our children, in a timely manner.
In many dioceses today,
they have a policy that the parents,
when they bring their first child to be baptized,
have to go through some kind of a course
to be prepared for the baptism.
Not a bad thing in itself,
because it is important for parents
to know what their responsibilities are
so that they don't take those responsibilities lightly.
It's tragic when parents bring their children
down to the waters of baptism
and then forget about all the other responsibilities
incumbent on that.
But at the same time, it's dangerous
if we make the course so long
that the child's baptism is deferred
and deferred and deferred,
or perhaps the parents are even discouraged
from baptizing the child altogether.
Because it's critical that the child
receive that grace early on in his life.
Because, of course, the infancy of a child
is always a dangerous period.
Even today, there are children who die early on in life.
And if they die without baptism,
we don't know exactly what happens to their souls.
If you consult the great doctors of the Church,
they say that the probable opinion,
and they say this pretty uniformly,
is that they would descend into limbo,
where they would not enjoy the presence of God
for all eternity in heaven.
In the New Catechism of the Catholic Church,
it says that we can hope that perhaps in some cases
God finds some mysterious way
to confer the grace that would ordinarily come
through baptism on a child who dies without it.
We can hope in that.
But there's a difference between hoping in that
as a possibility in some cases
versus saying that God always does that.
It would be very rash to say that
oh, well, we don't have to baptize the child
because, of course, God will give that special grace.
No, we don't know that.
We don't have that certitude.
And so you always have to assume in these cases
the worst-case scenario and then act accordingly.
And so it's important that we baptize children very young.
Some couples today, perhaps influenced by the spirit
of the times, they think it's a good thing
to defer the baptism until the child is older.
They say, well, we'll kind of raise the child
with good morals and virtues and then at a certain point
when he's old enough to decide whether he wants to be baptized,
then he can take that step himself.
And they'll say, well, because with baptism
we assume responsibilities for the child
and we figure, well, that should be the child's decision, right?
Wow, that's very dangerous reasoning.
That's one thing we have to remember,
that our Lord commanded the apostles to go forth
and preach the gospel to all nations,
baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son
and of the Holy Spirit.
He didn't just suggest to them as a possible good idea
that they be baptized.
No, he commanded them to baptize.
And every couple should hear that command
as being addressed personally to them in a very special way.
And the reason for that is because the child
doesn't assume responsibilities
just when he is baptized,
but actually he has responsibilities in a sense
from the very beginning of his life.
Because each one of us that comes into this world
does already have a Christian vocation.
Every man, woman, and child is called
to enter into the Church of Christ
because that's what we were made for.
You know, God didn't make some people to be Christians
and other people to be Muslims and other people to be Buddhists.
No, that's an error to say that.
You know, there's only one truth,
and that one truth is found in its fullness
only in the Catholic Church.
Grace and salvation are found in the Church.
The sacraments can be found only in the Church.
And so each one of us has a responsibility
from the very beginning of our life,
in particular when we reach the age of reason,
to seek out the truth and then to live it,
to embrace it with all of our hearts and to live it.
Each one of us already has a vocation
to know Christ and to love him and serve him in this world
so that we can enter eternal life.
And so what a couple is doing
when they deny their child baptism
is not allowing the child to decide
whether he wants this responsibility,
but rather giving a child a head start
in living out that responsibility.
Because the grace of baptism,
when it's poured forth into a baby's soul,
what does it mean?
It means that that child will already be disposed of.
It means that that child will already be disposed
to live out those responsibilities in the future.
It means that the child will already have
the presence of God dwelling in his soul,
opening his mind and his heart
to the graces that God will offer him in the future.
Whereas if you don't baptize the child,
it means you're denying that child that head start
in carrying out a responsibility
which ultimately we all have.
And so on this commemoration of the baptism of our Lord,
let's first of all thank our Lord
for the gift of his passion in death,
which purchased for us the graces of baptism.
Let's thank him for the grace of our own baptism.
Let's also renew our zeal
for bringing the grace of baptism to all people,
especially to the people in our lives
who perhaps have not been baptized,
non-Christians,
or those Christians who, for whatever reason,
don't believe in baptism
or who defer it until later in life.
Let's also remember,
every time we walk into church,
we take the holy water
and we sign ourselves with the sign of the cross.
Let's remember what that means.
It's a very beautiful gesture
where in a sense we renew our baptismal promises.
We remember our own baptism
which enabled us to enter into the church.
And so we remember our baptism
when we enter the church.
And then when we sign ourselves walking out of the church,
we remember that mission that we have
to go forth to preach the gospel to all nations,
baptizing them in the name of the Father
and of the Son
and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.