The Joys of Baptism

Ave Maria!  This past Sunday we celebrated the Baptism of Our Lord Jesus Christ.  As is customary on this splendid feast, Pope Benedict XVI baptized several children during the celebration of Mass at St. Peter’s in Rome. 

In his homily, the Holy Father spoke of the joy that the sacrament of Baptism gives us: 

• “the joy of being Christians and of belonging to the Church”
• “the joy that flows from the awareness of having received a great gift from God, precisely the faith, a gift that none of us was able to merit, but that was given to us gratuitously and to which we responded with our ‘yes’”
• “the joy of recognizing ourselves as children of God, to find ourselves entrusted into his hands, to feel ourselves welcomed in the embrace of love, in the same way that a mother holds and embraces her child”

“This joy,” the Holy Father noted, “which orients the journey of every Christian, is based on a personal relationship with Jesus, a relationship that orients the whole of human existence. He is in fact the meaning of our lives, he upon whom it is good to fix our gaze, to be enlightened by his truth and be able to live his fullness.”

The Holy Father added that our journey of faith that began with our baptism and continues even today, “is thus founded on a certainty, the experience that there is nothing greater than knowing Christ and communicating friendship with him to others; only in this friendship is there really disclosed the extraordinary possibilities of the human condition and can we experience that which is beautiful and that which frees. Those who have had this experience are not willing to give up their faith for anything in the world.”

As the Holy Father prayed later that day in his Angelus message, "May every Christian, in this Year of Faith, rediscover the beauty of being reborn from above, from the love of God, and live as a child of God."

Thanks be to God for His unspeakable gift! (2 Cor 9:15)