Your Baptism is Important: Homily for Monday, January 8, 2024

Pope Francis challenged people yesterday about whether or not they remembered the day they were baptized, the date. Because most of us wouldn't remember that. I do happen to know the date of my baptism.

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What we celebrate today is important for Jesus, but more important for us. It is an occasion to remember the day that changed your entire life. It is the day that you became the beloved son or daughter of God. And that indeed is the most important thing in your life.

Your Baptism is Important

During the time when Jesus is on earth, the Father only speaks twice. Once in the baptism of Jesus that we hear about today, and the other at the transfiguration. And both times God says the same thing. “This is my beloved Son, listen to Him.”

And what we celebrate today is not only the baptism of the Lord, which is certainly a tremendous event, but our own baptism as well. It was the baptism of Jesus that made the waters of baptism holy. John baptized too, but it was a different kind of baptism. It was in fact the baptism that came when someone by their own will power said, I’m going to turn my life around.

When Jesus was baptized, He made holy the waters of baptism. And when baptism occurred after that by Jesus and ultimately through the Church, it was God who did the work. It wasn’t simply someone’s desire, but rather the Spirit of God who made a fundamental change in who someone was.

It’s for this reason that the Church in fact teaches you can only be baptized once. We’re not a church that baptizes more than once. And we have a very high acceptance of baptism. As long as water is used and the right formula is used, we accept it as a valid baptism, even if it didn’t occur in a Catholic Church.

Why? Because this fundamentally changes who we are. But we do need to do one thing, and that is to be aware that when we were baptized, we were made into beloved sons and daughters of God. That our identity is different, and it means that we are challenged to live in a different way. It means that we are called by God to do something wonderful and dramatic in our own lives.

Pope Francis challenged people yesterday about whether or not they remembered the day they were baptized, the date. Because most of us wouldn’t remember that. I do happen to know the date of my baptism.

But then he gave a little bit of homework. He said, if you don’t know it, look it up and celebrate it. Because in many ways, this was the day that made all the difference in life. It is that important. It opened the door to the life of grace. All the other sacraments occur after one is baptized. It’s the gateway to the sacraments.

Most importantly, our baptism opens the door to us for eternal life. And that’s pretty dramatic indeed. And that’s pretty wonderful indeed. And so, let us take the words of the Father seriously, and because we have been baptized, listen to his son Jesus.

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