Baptism

EWTN Global Catholic Radio and St. Joseph Communications proudly present Life is Worth Living with Archbishop Fulton Sheen. This 50-part series was recorded on phonograph records in the 1960s and the sound quality is sometimes limited, but the word of God spoken by Archbishop Sheen is timeless. And now, here is Archbishop Fulton Sheen. Peace be to you. In order to live a natural life, we have to be born to it. In order to live a supernatural or divine life, we must be born to it, and that is the sacrament of baptism, which is the subject of this lesson. Baptism is the sacrament that incorporates us into the mystical body of Christ, the Church, and is therefore called the door of the Church. There is just a faint parallel to be drawn between the Church and the nation in this sense. Most of us did not wait until we were 21, then study the Constitution and the history of the United States, and decide to become American citizens. We were born out of the womb of America. The country was first. We were born into it as citizens, but in the strict sense, the Church itself is first, Christ's mystical body. Baptism incorporates us into it. We are born out of the womb of the Church. As we explained before, we do not become members of the Church in somewhat the same way as a brick is added to brick in a house. We become incorporated to the Church very much as cells expand from central cells. But you may ask, what difference does the pouring of a little water make? Well as regards the water itself, it probably makes very little difference. That is to say, the water alone. Take the water in a steam engine. You might ask, what difference does a little water make? When you combine it with the mind and the spirit of an engineer, it can drive a steam engine from one end of the country to the other. And so too when water is united with the Spirit of God, it is capable of making us something that we are not, namely partakers of his divine nature. Remember the beautiful description of baptism that is given in the Gospel of St. John. I shall read the third chapter, verse one down to seven. There was a man called Nicodemus, a Pharisee, and one of the rulers of the Jews who came to see Jesus by night. Master, he said to him, we know that thou hast come from God to teach us. No one, unless God were with him, could do the miracles which thou doest. Jesus answered him, believe me when I tell you this, a man cannot see the kingdom of God without being born anew. Nicodemus asked him, how is it possible that a man should be born when he is already old? Can he ever enter a womb a second time and so come to birth? Jesus answered, believe me, no man can enter the kingdom of God unless birth comes to him from water and from the Holy Spirit. What is born by natural birth is a thing of nature. What is born by spiritual birth is a thing of the Spirit. Our Lord is here speaking of a second birth that is completed by two agencies, water and the Holy Spirit. Water, of and by itself, can exercise no spiritual influence, but it is a material sign of what is done and communicated invisibly and spiritually in the soul, thanks to the words of baptism, I baptize thee in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Water was rather a good sign for the sacrament of baptism. First of all, it signifies a washing, and baptism washes us from our sins. Furthermore, water is transparent to light, it signifies how a light can be communicated, the light of faith, into the soul. The Greeks used to say that all life came from water. Their biology may have been wrong, but theologically they were rather sound, for all divine life really does begin with water. Notice that our blessed Lord said to Nicodemus that unless he was born again of baptism in the Holy Spirit, he could not enter the kingdom of heaven. In other words, it was impossible. We should not be surprised at this, after all, we cannot live a human life unless we are born of the flesh, and we cannot live a divine life unless we are born of God. Now we are capable of that. We are, as some philosophers have said, capax dei, we are capable of God. Nature is full of examples of such capacities. All seeds are of this nature. They are dead until favorable circumstances of soil quicken them into life. The egg of a bird has in it the capacity to become a bird like the parent, but it remains a dead thing and will corrupt if the parent forsakes it. There are many of the summer insects which are twice born, first of their insect parents, then of the sun. If the frost comes in place of the sun, they die. The caterpillar has already a life of its own, with which no doubt it is well content. But enclosed in its nature as a creeping thing, it has a capacity for becoming something higher and different. It may become a moth or a butterfly, but in most the capacity is never developed. They die before they reach that end. Circumstances do not favor their development. These analogies show how common it is for capacities of life to lie dormant, and how common a thing it is for a creature in one stage of its existence to have a capacity for passing into a higher stage. But note this, a capacity which can be developed only by some agency outside of it and adapted to it. It is in this condition man is born of a human parent. He is born with a capacity for higher life than that which he lives as an animal in this world. There is in him a capacity for becoming something different and higher. That capacity lies dormant and dead until the Holy Spirit comes and quickens it. The influence has to come from without. There must be the efficient touch of the Holy Spirit, the impartation of his life. The capacity to be a child of God is man's, but the development of this lies with God. We have to be quickened from without. We cannot give physical birth to ourselves, and we cannot give divine birth to ourselves. When the sacrament is received, what are some of the effects? One of the principal effects is that it remits original sin, that is to say, that sin of nature which we have inherited from Adam. If we are adults, and have never been baptized before, baptism remits not only original sin, but all of our personal sins. Imagine therefore a great sinner being baptized on his deathbed. Suppose he dies immediately after baptism. He has no sins to go before the judgment seat of God, and the reason is that he has just been born. We are not, however, to presume that God will give us this grace for our deathbed. Baptism therefore is something that makes us pass out of one land or one kingdom to another. It is like the passage of the Jews over the Dead Sea, from the slavery of Egypt to the land of freedom. Baptism is a passage like that, for we are transmuted from the kingdom of earth to the kingdom of heaven. We no longer belong to the race of Adam, we belong to the race of the new Adam. We pass from one master to another. That is why in the ceremony of baptism, the one who is baptized is asked, Thus thou renounce Satan. Are you willing to pass from the overlordship of Satan to the overlordship of Christ? We die, therefore, in baptism to our old nature. That is why in the early church baptism was often given by a Marian. Paul tells us that when we are baptized, we are buried with Christ. It is like our old Adam being crucified. And then, when we are baptized, which corresponds to the resurrection, we receive the newness of the life of Christ. There are therefore in the world, really, not a multiplicity of races and nations. There are two humanities. One is the humanity of Adam, and the other is the humanity of Christ. One is the unregenerate humanity, and the other is the reborn, spiritualized humanity. Those who are incorporated into the mystical body of Christ. Something else to be noted about baptism is this, that there is no such thing as being baptized into a certain sect. For example, no one is baptized a holy rower. No one is baptized into the four-square gospel. No one is baptized into the triangular church. St. Paul says, for all you who have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. We are baptized into Christ's body, which is the church. That is when there is only one body. That is why it is not necessary for us, if we are absolutely certain of the baptism of anyone outside of the church, to re-baptize that person. It makes no difference who baptizes. It is only important that the one who is baptized outside of the church have the necessity or rather the intention of doing what the church intends to do. But today we cannot be sure that there are many who believe in the divinity of Christ's original sin, and therefore when they are baptized they have the intention of doing what the church intends. I know of one who baptizes his catechumens with a water lily. He stands them up before him and strikes each of them on the head with a lily and declares them baptized. It is a water lily, I should say, but it is hardly a valid baptism. The point to be noted is that we are all baptized into the one church, the one body of Christ. Whether we know it or not, here is a difficulty that is worth considering. There are many who do not have an opportunity to be baptized. How about them? It must be noted that there are three kinds of baptism. In addition to the baptism of water, there is also the baptism of desire and baptism of blood. Now, baptism of desire takes place when a person who has never received baptism loves God above all things and desires to be ardently united with him as sorrow for sins and is resolved to be baptized as soon as he can, if he knows anything about baptism. There must indeed be many pagans and Buddhists, Confucianists, and all peoples who have had a desire according to the light that they have received to be united with God and have followed his commandments, but willingly accept anything that God revealed to them. They have baptism of desire, and therefore they are incorporated in some way to the mystical body of Christ. In addition to that, there is baptism of blood. Suppose you were receiving instructions in a land where there was persecution. The soldiers of a dictator came to you and asked you if you intended to join the Church. You answered in the affirmative. They would then sentence you to death. Rather than deny the faith that you had and the hope that you might be baptized, you submit to death. That is what is known as baptism by blood, because here there is the supreme witness to Christ by blood, as there is a supreme love of Christ, as supreme as it can be in the natural order and the part of those who have baptism of desire. I was once instructing a person who came to the subject of baptism, and she said, I have never been baptized. Suppose that I should die tonight. What would happen to me? Well, I said, you certainly desire, do you not, to receive baptism? She answered most ardently, I can hardly wait. She did die that night. She had baptism of desire. Another effect of baptism is the infusion of certain virtues into the soul. These virtues are seven, faith, hope, charity, prudence, justice, temperance, fortitude. The first three, faith, hope, and charity, relate us directly to God so that we believe in him, hope in him, and love him. The other virtues are concerned with the means or the steps by which we come to God. Namely, we are quoting, for example, about the use of this world in order to attain the kingdom of God, and so on for the other virtues. These virtues are infused into the soul. Now, in order to understand a virtue, the best way to think of it, probably, is in terms of a habit. There are two kinds of habits, acquired and infused, and the acquired habit is playing tennis or playing a violin, and infused habit is swimming for a duck. Now, these virtues are infused into the soul. It is very much as if we woke up some morning and discovered that we could play musical instruments which before we never touched. Then we would have an infused habit or virtue in the natural order which was not our own. When we are baptized, the habit of faith is infused, or the virtue of faith. That incidentally is why when children come to us in our parochial school, small though they be, they are immediately receptive to all the teachings about God, our blessed Lord, and the Church. They already have the faith. We do not have to prove to them the existence of God. We merely have to give reasons and give development and explanations of the faith that is already in them. A brief word now about particularly faith and hope and charity. Faith is not a wish to believe or a will to believe something, something contrary to reason. Faith is not living as if something were true. Faith is the acceptance of a truth on the authority of God revealing, as manifested in the Church and in Scripture. God alone causes faith in the believer. And faith is not the acceptance of abstract ideas. It is so often said, oh, by faith you have to accept a number of dogmas. No! Faith is participation in the life of God. In faith two persons meet, God and ourselves. Our affirmation of faith does not come because we see a truth very clearly, but it comes from the vision of him who reveals that truth. And we know that he cannot deceive nor be deceived. Faith is not contrary to reason. Many will ask, how could you ever accept the faith? Did you not have to abandon reason? No, faith perfects reason. Faith is to reason very much like a telescope is to the eye. Telescope enables us to see new worlds and new stars that's up and by our own selves and unaided eyes we could not see. And so too, faith enables us to see truths which we could not see by our reason alone. There is another fact, human reason is stronger with faith than without it. Just as our senses are stronger with reason than without reason. Take a drunkard, he has lost his power of reason. Do his senses function well? Does he see well? Does he walk well? Does he talk well? Why do not his senses work well? Because God intended that they should be perfected by reason, so too reason is to be perfected by faith. That too is often why a person who loses faith will discover that his reason does not exercise itself as well as it did before. It's very interesting to read the writings of those who once had faith and lost it. Their mind is wandering and confused. We have the same eyes at night as we have in the daytime, but we cannot see at night. The reason is we lack the additional light of the sun, and so let two people look out on a host. One sees bread, and the other with the eyes of faith sees our blessed Lord. It is because one has a light which the other has not. Therefore we thank God for revealing to us this beautiful sacrament of baptism, which gives us this light which makes us his children. The ceremonies of the sacrament are beautiful, persist some time at a baptism, and the priest will explain all of the ceremonies as they take place. They are beautiful, like putting on the white robe. Dante spoke of it, saying that purgatory was a place where we go to wash our baptismal robes. Would to God that that robe of innocence that we receive in baptism, we could always keep clean before God and men. God love you. Please join us again next time for Life is Worth Living with Archbishop Fulton Sheen on EWTN Global Catholic Radio.