All that Baptism Entails

Feast of the Baptism of the Lord
    I’m not the biggest fan of cheese.  Yes, I’ll eat pizza, but it usually has to have some meat toppings on it.  The same goes for lasagna: I’ll eat it, but if it’s meat lasagna it’s much more enjoyable.  Some of my dislike for cheese is taste, but my body also doesn’t agree with it.  So if I go out to eat, I usually have to check if there is cheese, for example, on a salad, or in a particular dish where it can be removed.
    While picking and choosing at a meal does not mean a big deal usually (after all, Burger King ran with the slogan “Have it your way”), when it comes to the sacrament of baptism, the same does not hold true.  Baptism does come as a customizable sacrament.  One cannot pick and choose which parts of baptism one wants, and which parts one would rather not come with the meal.

    Perhaps not as much at this parish, but always a perennial danger, is picking which parts of baptism we want, and ignoring the others.  As a reminder, baptism washes away original sin, opens for us the path to salvation, makes us an adopted child of God, and make us a member of the Church.  Everyone takes seriously the first two effect of baptism.  In my fifteen years of being a priest, parents know that their child has original sin, which is not a personal sin but a state of being opposed to God.  As St. Paul says, before baptism we were enemies of God (see Romans 5:10).  That is what we mean by original sin.  Another effect is that baptism also opens the possibility of salvation, by granting us, for the first time, sanctifying grace: the grace that makes us holy, which allows us to stand in the presence of God who is Holiness Himself.  Before baptism we lack sanctifying grace.  While God can choose to grant sanctifying grace to whomever He wishes and however He wises, the only way we know that God gives us the grace that makes heaven possible is baptism.  Again, parents want their child to go to heaven, and realize that we never know what can happen, so they make baptism a priority.
    But part and parcel with the washing away of original sin and the opening of the possibility of heaven is becoming an adopted child of God and a member of the Church.  These two effects connect with each other because, when one becomes an adopted child of God, one becomes a part of the Mystical Body of Christ which is the Church.  To belong to Christ means to belong to the society He formed which helps us live out the call to continue in sanctifying grace.  Even those who receive baptism outside the Catholic Church (as long as their baptism is administered validly) are connected to the Catholic Church and only need to be received into full communion, rather than baptized.  
    Receiving adoption from God entails trying to live a Godly life.  St. Paul also says, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.”  That is the goal, or should be, of every Catholic.  Our actions should be the actions that Christ would take were He in our circumstances.  They way I work, the way I rest and recreate, the way I live in a family, the friends I choose, what I eat and drink: all should be what Christ would do in my circumstances.  St. Paul talks about putting to death the old man (sinful man), and setting our minds on what is above (the new man, Christ) so that heaven is the natural consequence that follows the way we lived our lives.
    The last effect, becoming a member of the Church, also entails certain rights and responsibilities.  We have the right to the other sacraments, as long as we are well-disposed to receive them.  We have the right to expect the Church to help us form children in the faith (though as an assistant, not as a surrogate parent).  We have the right to make our needs known to the pastors of the Church–from me, your local pastor, to the bishop, and even to the pope, should it be necessary.  But every right carries with it a responsibility–the duty to support the Church financially according to our means; the duty to attend Mass each Sunday and holyday unless sick, caring for the sick, or work necessitates our absence; the duty to grow in our understanding of the faith according to our God-given intellectual gifts.  This last part is what parents usually ask to exclude from the sacramental meal, or at least to set it on the side so they can add it if they want it, and only in the amounts they want.
    But baptism is all or nothing.  Either we choose all the effects of baptism, and all that those effects entail for the person and, in the case of infants, for his or her parents, or we should not choose it at all.  A parent’s eternal salvation does not depend on his or her child remaining Catholic after adulthood, but is impacted by how much the parent raises the child in the faith while the child is still under the parent’s guidance.  Skipping Mass on a Sunday or holyday for no good reason not only harms the parent (skipping Mass is a mortal sin), but compounds when a person also has the responsibility of getting a young person to Mass on those days who cannot go on his or her own.  
    And the judgement of my soul connects to how I make sure that you understand what baptism means and how it affects you.  I do this through baptism formation classes before you have your firstborn, and occasional homilies like this where I remind you just how weighty a choice it is to have your child baptized.  Baptism is so beautiful, and I was honored to celebrate 32 baptisms last calendar year, but it is also my hope that each of those whom I baptized continue to practice the faith to the best of his or her ability.  

    Baptism is not a customizable sacrament.  We cannot ask the Divine Chef not to include certain parts that we don’t like, or set them to the side.  Baptism means new life and sanctification, and is the ordinary requirement for salvation.  But it also means making the life of Christ our own and living up to what it means to be a part of the one Church Jesus Christ founded.  May our celebration of the Baptism of the Lord today remind all of us just how important and weighty baptism is, so that we live up to the call that each of receives in baptism: to turn away from sin; to make choices that lead us to heaven; to live as a child of God; and to live as that child of God in the Catholic Church.

For Whom would we Give Up our Life?

Fourth Sunday of Lent

There are a few people, but probably only a few, for whom the average person would give up his or her life.  I think any parent (any good parent, anyway) would give up his or her life for the child.  Siblings sometimes would give up their life for each other.  But generally the list of people for whom another person would give up his or her life is pretty small.

That is what is so impressive about those who serve in the military, law enforcement, or fire departments: they have made a commitment to give up their lives for total strangers.  It is quite humbling for me riding along with our MSP Troopers and seeing them walk up to cars, many with guns in them, and even while they practice safe approaches to the vehicle to limit their chance of being attacked, it still has happened all too frequently that they are in a situation where they may have to lay down their life, not only for a family member or friend, but for the citizens who may not even know they exist.  

If we think about it, giving up our life for a stranger is maybe a little easier if that person is good, maybe what we consider a productive member of society.  But what our first and second reading remind us this weekend is that we weren’t good.  This is an important aspect of salvation history: God loved us and entered into covenants with us to give us life and happiness, but we never lived up to our end of the bargain.  In the Garden of Eden, before we even had sin, we disobeyed God.  God saved Noah and his family because they followed God, but not long after that, Noah’s sons messed things up again.  Abraham did pretty well, but he still had inherited the sin of Adam and Eve that we call original sin.  Moses received the Law, the Ten Commandments from God, and no sooner had God given the Law, then the people broke it.  Even Moses himself couldn’t enter the Promised Land because he had disobeyed God on their journey through the desert.  King Saul disobeyed God, so David was chosen, but even David committed murder to cover up his adulterous relationship with Bathsheba.  Solomon started worshipping foreign gods, even though he had built the temple in Jerusalem, because of the influence of his foreign wives, and most of the kings who followed him were just as evil.  And so on and so on.  No one, not even the prophets, were good enough to earn heaven.  We all were, as St. Paul said in the second reading, “dead in our transgressions.”

And that’s what makes the familiar line we hear in the Gospel so powerful.  It’s not simply a sign that people hold up at football games behind the goal posts.  “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.”  ‘Of course he did!’ we might say to ourselves.  We are so used to God dying for us, to save us from everlasting death and Hell, that we might be a little numb to the power that is in those words.  We might die for family or friends.  We may even die for a good person.  But Jesus died for those who were His enemies: those who worked against Him starting with Adam and Eve, those who clamored for His death in Jerusalem, and for us who have nailed Jesus to the cross each time we sin.  The power of what Jesus did comes from the fact that we were, before baptism, the enemies of God, working against God, happy to do our own thing, rather than follow God.  Even the most just man, because of original sin, was still an enemy of God who could not earn salvation.

How comfortable have so many of us become with the killing of God.  We take it as a matter of fact, and it is in the sense that it has happened.  But it should not have happened.  Jesus is the light of the world, and came not to condemn us but to save us, but we preferred darkness; and so we tried to snuff out the light.  But the light conquered our darkness, as light always does.  

Think of the person who troubles you the most; maybe you even hate that person.  That person has harmed you in a way you find unforgivable.  And now you have to die for that person tomorrow so that he or she can live.  Really think about it; what would be your reaction?  What would be your honest reaction?  Jesus’ reaction was love; not begrudgingly, not with caveats and conditions, not as one forced to do what is for the best, but not the best for Him.  Jesus died for us because He loved us.  He let us kill Him with our sins because He loved us.  We did not earn salvation, nor can we; “this is not from you; it is the gift of God.”  

The question is whether or not we will respond to God’s gift of salvation.  Will we choose the light, or do we prefer darkness?  Do we believe in Jesus, follow Him, and so find eternal life, or will we be condemned because we do not believe?  We are not worth dying for.  But Jesus died for us anyway.  Accept that love of God that died for you so that you may live.  

Putting Sin to Death

Good Friday of the Lord’s Passion

It might seem cruel of Jesus to say, as He did: “Whoever wishes to come after my must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.”  Why does the path to Jesus have to go through pain and suffering?  Why does the path to Jesus have to go through death?  Is God sadistic?  Does He love seeing His children in pain?  What is it about following Jesus that the cruelest torture the Romans could imagine would be the image of being a disciple of Jesus?

God does not rejoice in the death of His children.  He is not a sadist.  Pain and suffering were not part of the plan.  But we chose to reject God, and through our sin, death entered the world.  While we have had original sin washed away from us in baptism, we still feel its lingering effects, like the cold winds of winter that try to keep spring from coming.  We still have the tendency to say no to God and yes to our disordered desires: eating or drinking too much; using our gift of sexuality not in accord with God’s Word; tearing others down by what we say; unforgiveness and vengeance in our hearts; power, greed, control.  

God had to put all of that, and more, to death, because as long as it lives, it could take over.  It had to die.  And so Jesus took all of our disordered desires upon Himself, and let them be killed in Him, on the cross, as He gasped for breath, desire for air competing with the excruciating pain of the nails in his body.  The death of sin became the opportunity for life in Christ.

God does not see sin as we do.  It is not simply a mistake, a bad choice, a wrong road that one goes down.  It is antithetical to who He is; a perversion; a warped way of living.  Sin is darkness to the light of holiness, and in the presence of the light, the darkness has no choice but to be destroyed.  There is no other way to deal with darkness.

Today as we venerate the cross, we have the opportunity to nail to the cross all the sins that we have committed.  As we come and genuflect or bow, and maybe kiss the cross, we bring with us the sins that led Jesus to a cross, to have to put to death every sin that was ever committed and will ever be committed.  As we come to venerate the cross we bring our darkness so that it can be put to death.  

This plain cross reminds us that there is no path to life except through it.  The only way to deal with sin is by killing it.  Bring all of your disordered desires, as I will bring mine, and let them die with Jesus.  Let darkness have its time today.  Let us keep watch, though, for tomorrow night, as darkness falls, light will have its eternity.

Freedom without Consequence

First Sunday of Lent

            This weekend is not just the first weekend of Lent, but also is the opening weekend for the movie “300: Rise of an Empire.”  I had seen the last “300” movie, and given it’s importance at Michigan State University (if I yelled out, “Spartans, what is your profession?” I know I would get a particular response), I thought I would see the sequel which deals with the battle between the rest of the Greeks and the Persians.  It was very bloody, and earned the R rating that it received.  However, at one point, and I don’t think this gives anything away, the Greek general is speaking with the leader of the Persian navy, who says to the Greek: “I can offer you freedom without consequence, without responsibility.”

           

That is the seductive lie that our first parents were told, and which they swallowed hook, line, and sinker.  Adam and Eve had paradise in the Garden of Eden.  They were truly free.  They wanted for nothing, and everything responded to their will, because they responded to the will of God.  Their only responsibility was to not eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  But the serpent, the Devil, the Father of Lies, seduced Adam and Eve into believing that they could be God’s equal.  Satan convinced them that they could have freedom without responsibility or consequence, that they would be answerable to no one.  And so they ate.  And by Adam’s act of disobedience, death entered the world as the order that God planned for the world was disrupted.  Because Adam had disobeyed God, the plants and animals would no longer obey Adam and Eve; Adam and Eve’s body would no longer be subject to their mind and soul; and Adam and Eve would both work to dominate each other, rather than work in a loving partnership.  Adam and Even thought that they could have freedom without responsibility or consequence, and so sin and death entered the world.

            This is what St. Paul reminds us in our first reading when he says, “Through one man sin entered the world, and through sin, death.”  One man represented all of humanity.  And in his exercise of freedom, we all received the consequences.  This is what the church calls original sin: not that we are born with a personal sin, but we receive the consequences of the disobedience of our first parents with the perpetual desire on earth to misuse freedom; to pretend that we can have freedom without responsibility, without consequence.  Who here has not experienced that desire, that temptation?  Who here has never wanted to do whatever he or she wanted and not have to worry about what would happen later?  We are born under the illusion that such a reality is possible, that there are actions that never affect anyone else.

            And because Jesus shared our human nature in all things but sin, Satan wanted to try to get the Son of God to fall.  Satan wanted to seduce Jesus into believing that He could use His power any way He wanted to, without any responsibility or consequence.  “Command that these stones becomes loaves of bread”; “throw yourself down”; “prostrate yourself and worship me”; in other words: “do whatever you want to do.”  But Jesus, as the new head of the human race, the new Adam, succeeds where Adam failed.  Because He is the author of freedom, He knows that freedom always has responsibility, always has consequences, and that freedom truly comes not from doing whatever we want, but from doing what is right.  He knows that to do whatever we want only makes us slaves to our passions and to the Evil One, whereas controlling our passions and resisting sin allows us to have true freedom by living according to the order God originally created for us. 

And so He rebukes Satan and the temptations he offers, and not only begins to undue the shackles of slavery which had formerly bound us (the shackles which will be definitively broken by Jesus freely submitting to the consequence of sin, though He did not know sin, and dying on the cross), but also, as our preface will say, “by overturning the snares of the ancient serpent, taught us to cast out the leaven of malice, so that, celebrating worthily the Paschal Mystery, we might pass over at last to the eternal paschal feast.”   He teaches us that we can use our freedom well and not be seduced by a false view of freedom.

Each day we are faced with countless opportunities to use our freedom that God has given to us.  We can use our freedom poorly, thinking that freedom does not involve responsibility or consequences and means that we can do whatever we want.  And when we do that, we lock the shackles of slavery around our necks, wrists, and ankles, and hand the key over to the ancient serpent.  Or we can use our freedom well, and claim “the abundance of grace and…the gift of justification,” so that we are not slaves to our passions and sins, but can “reign in life through…Jesus Christ.”  May our penitential practices this Lent purify our understanding of freedom so that we may share in the eternal freedom of the children of God in heaven.

***************DURING THE RITE OF SENDING ONLY***************

My dear Catechumens, I want to address you now, in a specific way.  You have been preparing, coming to know Jesus and accept the invitation that He extends to all people: to receive the benefits of His freedom and be cleansed from original sin through baptism; to be strengthened to profess His Name to all people through confirmation; and to come into full union with Him through the reception of His Body and Blood in the Eucharist.

My dear candidates, I also want to address you.  You are already one with us in baptism, which is no small thing, because you have been claimed for Christ already and washed clean of the stain of original sin.  You have also been preparing to know Jesus more deeply, and have been preparing to join the one Church of Christ, to receive that gift of the Holy Spirit in Confirmation by which you can spread the faith, and to come into full union with Jesus through the reception of His Body and Blood.

Catechumens and candidates, you are a witness to us of how Christ continues to call people into His Church, into the fullness of truth, and how to live freely.  You are a witness to the world that the lie that freedom is doing whatever you want is just that, a lie, and that true freedom only comes from life in Christ.  Thank you for your witness.  May you be upheld in that witness during this time of final preparation for the Easter mysteries and receive what Christ intends for each of you as you begin your new pilgrimage with us as full members of the Catholic Church.