By Deacon Dan Dombrosky
Whenever I celebrate a baptism, I urge parents to remember this special day with their children, just like a birthday. Most of us don’t remember the most important day in our lives – the day we were baptized, reborn through water and the Holy Spirit. Through baptism, we were freed from original sin and joined to Jesus forever.
Jesus is baptized in today’s gospel, not because he needed John’s baptism (Jesus was sinless), but to show us the need for baptism, to give us an example to follow. Eventually, Jesus asked the apostles to baptize everyone: “Go, teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” (Matt 28:19).
When Nicodemus came to Jesus, Jesus said to him, “… no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit.” (John 3:5). Baptism is so important in our lives that Jesus describes it as “being born.” We receive our physical life from our mother and father, and in baptism, we receive divine life, the life of God in us. We are reborn as children of God through water and the Holy Spirit.
After baptism, we are completely different. We live every day knowing God is our Father, and we are his beloved sons and daughters. We are children of the Father, which is why we pray “Our Father.”
God is your Father – and we share in God’s life forever! That means death is not the end, so we look forward to the resurrection. Just as Jesus rose from the grave, we too look forward to joining him in everlasting life because we were joined to him in baptism.
Now that’s a truth worth celebrating, even more than a birthday!