Baptism

The sacrament of baptism confers a permanent mark or character on the human soul of the one who receives it.


Where in the soul does the indelible character of baptism reside? 

St. Thomas tells is that it dwells in our knowing or cognitive power. And why is this? Because the sacrament is an outward sign conveying grace, and a sign is understood; it is a matter of knowledge. Our baptismal character is a permanent strengthening of our power to know in view of the worship we must give to the God who has revealed himself to us. Our character is a marking for the sake of worship, which is the highest end of “our selves, our souls, and bodies” as the Mass of the Anglican use of the Roman rite says.

[In the Bible, and in the Liturgy], the Baptism of the Lord reveals, manifests, confirms the truth of the Trinity, so that we may cry out in worship, “Glory to you!”  We are told that the light of Christ’s countenance has been marked on us, that is has permanently characterized our Christian mind. And why? Because “Knowing you, we sing your praises.” The character exists for worship.

This is what the “priesthood of the faithful” means. By the character of baptism, they are able by faith more intensely to see the “unapproachable light,” and so offer due worship to the most holy Trinity. The importance of this last point is forcefully borne out in St. Thomas’s definition of the purpose of the sacrament of matrimony: “the procreation and education of children for the worship of God according to the rite of the Christian religion.” You can see how a deeper understanding of our baptismal character as ordered to worship helps us in turn to understand marriage, whereby the lives that come to be from it are intended for the life of Christian worship.

Someone might ask, but what about love, the will? Surely the character is not just about our intellects! Well, the will has no way of expressing itself without the use of signs, and signs are directed to understanding, and baptism is such a sign. A slap on the back, a handshake, a hug, or a kiss all express different degrees of affection, which is in the will and appetite of human beings, but they are all signs that have to be understood in order for the love to be communicated.

The wondrous character of baptism makes us able to use and receive the other signs of Christ’s love for us, that “Spirit and fire” that far exceed the Old Law or the baptism of John. Now all water is a sign, the matter for birth to eternal life. Before Christ it was not. Indeed, the whole world and all of human life from birth to death have been transformed by these holy signs, the sacraments: they establish his Church, and the sacramental character of baptism opens the floodgates of his grace for our whole life after, and indeed into eternity where the character is not lost because then our worship will have been perfected!

Glory to him and to his Father and their life-giving Spirit, world without end. Amen


From a sermon on psalm forty-one addressed to the newly baptized by Saint Jerome, priest
I will enter God’s marvelous dwelling place

As the deer longs for running water, so my soul longs for you, my God. Just as the deer longs for running water, so do our newly baptized members, our young deer, so to speak, also yearn for God. By leaving Egypt and the world, they have put Pharaoh and his entire army to death in the waters of baptism. After slaying the devil, their hearts long for the springs of running water in the Church. These springs are the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Jeremiah testifies that the Father is like a fountain when he says: They have forsaken me, the fountain of living water, to dig for themselves cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no water. In another passage we read about the Son: They have forsaken the fountain of wisdom. And again, John says of the Holy Spirit: Whoever drinks the water I will give him, that water shall become in him a fountain of water, springing up into eternal life. The evangelist explains that the Savior said this of the Holy Spirit. The testimony of these texts establishes beyond doubt that the three fountains of the Church constitute the mystery of the Trinity.

These are the waters that the heart of the believer longs for, these are the waters that the heart of the newly baptized yearns for when he says: My heart thirsts for God, the living fountain. This is not a weak, faint desire to see God; rather the newly baptized actually burn with desire and thirst for God. Before they received baptism, they used to ask one another: When shall I go and see the face of God? Now their quest has been answered. They have come forward and they stand in the presence of God. They have come before the altar and have looked upon the mystery of the Savior.

Having received the body of Christ, and being reborn in the life-giving waters, they speak up boldly and say: I shall go into God’s marvelous dwelling place, his house. The house of God is the Church, his marvelous dwelling place, filled with joyful voices giving thanks and praise, filled with all the sounds of festive celebration.

This is the way you should speak, you newly baptized, for you have now put on Christ. Under our guidance, by the word of God you have been lifted out of the dangerous waters of this world like so many little fish. In us the nature of things has been changed. Fish taken out of the sea die; but the apostles have fished for us and have taken us out of the sea of this world so we could be brought from death to life. As long as we were in the world, our eyes looked down into the abyss and we lived in filth. After we were rescued from the waves, we began to look upon the sun and look up at the true light. Confused in the presence of so much joy, we say: Hope in God, for I shall again praise him, in the presence of my savior and my God.