The first sacrament which a Christian receives
is Baptism. In this symbolic washing, God makes us His adopted children.
Whether by pouring water or being completely immersed in water, God
heals the state of separation from Himself, the state of original sin,
into which we are all born. By Baptizing people to make them Christian,
the Church is carrying out the command of Jesus:
Then Jesus approached and said to them,
"All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go,
therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the
name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the holy Spirit, teaching
them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with
you always, until the end of the age."(Mt 28:18-20 )
Jesus even said that
this Sacrament is necessary for salvation. "Whoever believes
and is baptized will be saved" (Mk 16:16). "Amen, amen,
I say to you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of
water and Spirit." (Jn 3:5)
Likewise the first disciples saw that Baptism
was essential as they preached the gospel and continued to establish the
Church.
"Therefore let the whole house of Israel
know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Messiah, this
Jesus whom you crucified." Now when they heard this, they were
cut to the heart, and they asked Peter and the other apostles,
"What are we to do, my brothers?" Peter (said) to them,
"Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus
Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you will receive the gift
of the holy Spirit. For the promise is made to you and to your
children and to all those far off, whomever the Lord our God will
call." He testified with many other arguments, and was exhorting
them, "Save yourselves from this corrupt generation." Those
who accepted his message were baptized, and about three thousand
persons were added that day (Acts 2:36-41).
And St. Paul, when he was converted, was told
"Get up and have yourself baptized and your sins washed away,
calling upon his name"(Acts 22:16).
St. Paul tells us that through baptism we
receive salvation by being made heirs to eternal life with Christ.
But when the kindness and generous love of
God our savior appeared, not because of any righteous deeds we had
done but because of his mercy, he saved us through the bath of rebirth
and renewal by the holy Spirit, whom he richly poured out on us
through Jesus Christ our savior, so that we might be justified by his
grace and become heirs in hope of eternal life (Titus 3:4-7).
Becoming heirs with Christ, adopted sons and
daughters, is what ultimately saves us from sin and death.
Original Sin
To understand why baptism is necessary, we have
to understand the state of separation from God that each of us is born
into. "Just as through one person sin entered the world, and
through sin, death, and thus death came to all, inasmuch as all sinned .
. ." (Rom 5:12 ). After the sin of Adam, all people would be
born into the world separated from the God and friendship with him which
he originally intended. Even if a person has not committed a sin of
their own, they do not come into the world with the grace that allows
their complete union with God.
And being estranged from God, all of us have
since committed our own personal sins against God. Because of Original
Sin, we constantly struggle between a desire to do good and the failure
to do so. This failure to do good is sin. "For the flesh has
desires against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; these are
opposed to each other, so that you may not do what you want" (Gal
5:17).
Being separated from God, the human race was in
need of a Savior. In our need, and not because we deserved it, but only
because He is loving and merciful, God graciously provided a man without
sin, God made man, who could make up for all the sins of the rest of us.
Jesus Christ, Son of Man and Son of God, is this Savior.
For if, by the transgression of one person,
death came to reign through that one, how much more will those who
receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of justification come
to reign in life through the one person Jesus Christ (Rom
5:17).
It is through the Sacrament of Baptism that we
enter into Christ’s life, sacrificial death and triumphant
resurrection.
Or are you unaware that we who were baptized
into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were indeed buried
with him through baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was
raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might live in
newness of life. For if we have grown into union with him through a
death like his, we shall also be united with him in the resurrection.
We know that our old self was crucified with him, so that our sinful
body might be done away with, that we might no longer be in slavery to
sin. For a dead person has been absolved from sin. If, then, we have
died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him.(Rom
6:3-8)
By dying with Christ in the waters of baptism
and rising with him in a rebirth to new life, God makes us his adopted
children, heirs to the life which Christ shares with the Father.
But you are not in the flesh; on the
contrary, you are in the spirit, if only the Spirit of God dwells in
you. Whoever does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to
him. But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because
of sin, the spirit is alive because of righteousness. If the Spirit of
the one who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, the one who
raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also,
through his Spirit that dwells in you. . . . For those who are led by
the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a
spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received a spirit of
adoption, through which we cry, "Abba, Father!" The Spirit
itself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and
if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if
only we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.(Rom
8:9-11, 14-17 )
Through the ministry of the Church, God
continues to bring people to salvation in faith by the waters of
baptism.
Baptism is the sacrament of faith. But faith
needs the community of believers. It is only within the faith of the
Church that each of the faithful can believe. The faith required for
Baptism is not a perfect and mature faith, but a beginning that is
called to develop (CCC 1253).
As Jesus commanded
his disciples to baptize and make disciples of all nations, it is the
ordinary way of receiving God’s grace and mercy. Of course, God can
work outside of this normal means. Jesus himself offers salvation to the
good thief in response to his faith. "Jesus, remember me when you
come into your kingdom." He replied to him, "Amen, I say to
you, today you will be with me in Paradise" (Lk 23:42-43).
But that it the exception to the rule which Jesus established. The
Church recognizes these extraordinary cases as "Baptisms of
Desire." The regular and ordinary way of becoming Jesus’ disciple
is through the Sacrament of Baptism with water administered by His
Church.
Infant Baptism
Discipleship, and so Baptism, must be
accompanied by faith. But as faith is a gift that is not merited, and so
Baptism is offered to infants who cannot profess their own faith. Jesus
himself showed that he wished for children to be brought to him.
Then children were brought to him that he
might lay his hands on them and pray. The disciples rebuked them, but
Jesus said, "Let the children come to me, and do not prevent
them; for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these."(Mt
19:13-14)
In the Baptism of infants, the faith of
parents, which they commit to handing on to their children, stands in
the place of the children’s own faith. These children will develop
their own faith under their parents’ guidance. Jesus often used other
people’s faith when offering his grace and forgiveness in his earthly
ministry.
One day as Jesus was teaching, Pharisees and
teachers of the law were sitting there who had come from every village
of Galilee and Judea and Jerusalem, and the power of the Lord was with
him for healing. And some men brought on a stretcher a man who was
paralyzed; they were trying to bring him in and set (him) in his
presence. But not finding a way to bring him in because of the crowd,
they went up on the roof and lowered him on the stretcher through the
tiles into the middle in front of Jesus. When he saw their faith, he
said, "As for you, your sins are forgiven. " (Lk
5:17-20).
Furthermore, baptism replaces the Jewish rite
of circumcision for bringing new members into God’s chosen people, the
Church.
In him you were also circumcised with a
circumcision not administered by hand, by stripping off the carnal
body, with the circumcision of Christ. You were buried with him in
baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the
power of God, who raised him from the dead (Col 2:11-12)
Just as infants were normally circumcised and
made members of the Jewish people because they would be raised in their
family’s Jewish faith, so infants have always been baptized and made
members of Christ’s Church because they would be raised in their
family’s Christian faith.
The Catholic practice of baptizing infants is
sometimes a controversial issue with some Protestant Christians because
it is not explicitly described in the Bible. There are indications,
though, of the practice, as when whole households, which almost
certainly included infants, were baptized (Acts 16:15, 33; 1 Cor
1:16). But all Christians should agree that there is nothing explicitly
in Scripture which forbids infant baptism. Rather, this has been
constant teaching and practice of the Church from the earliest centuries
as explicitly described by St. Irenaeus (AD 189), Hippolytus (AD 215)
and Origen (AD 244). Infant baptism is still practiced by Orthodox,
Anglican (Episcopalian), Lutheran and Methodist Christians.
Confirmation
We become true members of Christ’s body at
our baptism, but Confirmation completes and confirms God’s grace of
adoption, and our commitment to God.
By the sacrament of Confirmation, [the
baptized] are more perfectly bound to the Church and are enriched with
a special strength of the Holy Spirit. Hence they are, as true
witnesses of Christ, more strictly obliged to spread and defend the
faith by word and deed" (CCC 1285).
Confirmation strengthens the life of grace and
seals our commitment with the Holy Spirit. "But the one who gives
us security with you in Christ and who anointed us is God; he has also
put his seal upon us and given the Spirit in our hearts as a first
installment" (2 Cor 1: 21-22).
"This seal of the Holy Spirit marks our
total belonging to Christ, our enrollment in his service for ever, as
well as the promise of divine protection in the great eschatological
trial" (CCC 1296)
As the gift of the Holy Spirit seals and
completes our membership in the Church, confirmation enables and demands
our sharing Christ with others. It was the gift of the Holy Spirit to
the Apostles after Jesus ascended into heaven which got them to begin
preaching the gospel to the world.
When the time for Pentecost was fulfilled,
they were all in one place together. And suddenly there came from the
sky a noise like a strong driving wind, and it filled the entire house
in which they were. Then there appeared to them tongues as of fire,
which parted and came to rest on each one of them. And they were all
filled with the holy Spirit and began to speak in different tongues,
as the Spirit enabled them to proclaim. (Acts 2:1-4)
The symbolic action by which the Holy Spirit
normally is given in Confirmation is a bishop laying his hands on the
person he is confirming. This normally happens some time after a person
is baptized as an infant in the Roman Catholic Church. This practice
reflects how it was done in the early Church.
Now when the apostles in Jerusalem heard that
Samaria had accepted the word of God, they sent them Peter and John,
who went down and prayed for them, that they might receive the holy
Spirit, for it had not yet fallen upon any of them; they had only been
baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Then they laid hands on them
and they received the holy Spirit (Acts 8:14-17).
When adults become Roman Catholic, though,
normally they receive this sacrament from a priest at the same time they
are baptized, as do infants when they are baptized in the Orthodox and
Eastern Catholic Churches.