This last weekend, we finished our celebration of Christmas with the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord. We end the Christmas season with the feast day celebration of the beginning of Jesus’ ministry when he is baptized by John the Baptist in the Jordan River.
There is much meaning to Jesus choosing to be baptized by John in the Jordan. Baptism for John the Baptist resembles the rituals of the Essenes: a group of Jews who rejected the Temple as corrupted and performed rituals in the Jordan Desert to prepare for the Messiah. Baptism was seen as a ritual of purification and preparation for the end times.
Jesus begins his ministry and does so with this purification ritual. Christians do not believe that Jesus had sinned, so his baptism is the sign that he takes on our sin. His body is purified not because it is dirty with sin, but because he enters into our humanity, which is quite sinful and separated from God. Hence, it is the mystery of the incarnation. Jesus became human and shares in our humanity, so that we can experience his divinity.
The baptism that John offered is not the same baptism that we offer today. Like most Christians, we look to Paul’s letter to the Romans to understand baptism. Through baptism we share in Christ’s death so that we may share in his resurrection (Roman 6:5). We are united to God through Jesus and the separation that is sin in our lives is removed (original sin).
For Catholics, baptism is a one-time event. We do not re-baptize those who choose to become Catholics after having been baptized in another Christian church. We believe that baptism places an indelible mark upon the soul. It cannot be done again, unlike the sacraments of Eucharist and reconciliation, which the faithful are encouraged to participate in frequently.
Baptism orients the person to Christ. Additionally, it makes him or her a member of the church, the mystical body of Christ. If one lives a lifestyle that is against his or her initial commitment to God in baptism, one repents, receives the sacrament of reconciliation and returns to living according to his or her baptismal promises.
A professed faith is required for baptism. The Catholic Church baptizes infants (ages 0-6) with the understanding that children are being baptized in the parents’ (and the community’s) faith. During the ceremony, the parents are asked directly if they believe that what is stated in the Nicene Creed is true and if they will raise the child in the Catholic faith. At least one parent must respond yes. If they do not, the baptism must be postponed, since there is no faith to base the baptism.
What has become more difficult for families in the Catholic Church is to find a sponsor for their child. According to canon law, at least one sponsor or godparent is required, and that sponsor must be fully initiated in the church already having received the sacraments of baptism, confirmation and Eucharist, and must be a practicing Catholic.
Parents are often stumped when they try to think of someone who they want as a godparent. What roadblock that occurs frequently is that the person is neither married in the church nor participating in a parish.
Many times grandparents or older relatives put pressure on young parents to have their babies baptized. There is the common, yet incorrect belief that children who are not baptized are outside of God’s mercy and instead go to a place called Limbo, which was described in Dante’s epic poem “The Inferno” as a circle in Hell, where the residents are not punished.
Innocent, unbaptized babies and noble, good pagan people would go there. Dante puts his favorite Greek and Roman philosophers and politicians there. I imagine it would be like Red Butte Gardens with a groovy band and a picnic basket of hor d’oerves and favorite beverages on a summer night. It’s not heaven, yet pretty darn pleasant.
So what is a Catholic grandparent to do when her children reject the faith, refuse to go to church, refuse to get married in the church, and refuse to raise the child in the faith? The grandparent could be the spiritual guardian of the child as long as her heathen children allow her to bring their child to church, enroll the child in our religious education program, or even better, our school, and basically fulfill the responsibilities of the parents.
However, without the good example of the parents, the effort is in vain, since the effort of going to church and attending a religious education class will annoy the child, especially while his or her parents do not put proper significance on their own faith life.
I remember when my 6-year-old sense of justice was piqued when I had to go to church with my mother, while my father would stay home in his shorts to do yard work. Without at least one parent taking me to church, I would never have been raised in the faith, developed a love for the liturgy, and ultimately entered the seminary.
The sacrament of baptism requires total commitment. It symbolizes death, since the rite encourages for there to be enough water in the font to be drowned. An early Church Bishop, Zeno called the baptismal font “the womb, the tomb, my mother.” We allow for the parts of ourselves that are separated from Christ to die, so that we can live more fully as committed Christians. We are born into the Christian community from which we will gain nourishment. The church is our mother and womb.
For many, the sacrament of baptism, like the other sacraments of initiation, confirmation and Eucharist, are seen more as good luck charms, tokens, rites of passage to nowhere, and family customs that really don’t mean anything significant.
Family members may make a fuss about having the child baptized; however, the families remain only culturally Catholic. The graces of the sacraments don’t seem to penetrate the skin. It is like the seeds on the rocky path or the shoots that wither in the sun or are choked by the weeds (Matthew 13; Mark 4).
At our parish, as at most parishes, our roles are full of names of families who bring their children to be baptized, but who are otherwise absent. What is unique now is that the 20 and 30 somethings are now more likely to not bring their children for baptism, which seems to be more honest to me. Why join and promise to do something if you have no intention of fulfilling your promise. Hard honesty is always better than a false piety.
I see so many families who fail to even make the attempt to be good Catholics. There is a huge difference between those of us who are sinners who fail and make the attempt over and over again, and those who are seemingly completely apathetic.
It is better that children do not have the example of mediocre and lifeless Christianity, so that if and when the children have a genuine curiosity for God, they may open up their lives to authentic conversion. By the grace of God, the old self may die so the new person in Christ may emerge and their whole life may be transformed by being a full member of the Church, the body of Christ.
Actions and life change precede change in belief and attitude. Rarely is it the other way around. When Jesus called his disciples, he asked them to follow him first. Through their experiences they understood what it was he taught, and only after his resurrection, did they come to understand who he was.
Christianity is much more about doing, than thinking. Baptism manifests interior faith and conversion. The efficacy of the sacrament requires the interior assent and faith of the one being baptized and the family members supporting him or her. Otherwise it’s like that saying about water on a duck’s back.
Rev. Dinsdale is the priest at St. Marguerite Catholic Church in Tooele.