Stuff Catholics Like

Baptism is a ceremony where naked babies are dunked into small pool like fonts then paraded around the church by a priest or deacon so the assembly can see the babies’ naked body parts. This ceremony can be risky as sudden exposure to the cold church air, a plunge into the cold font water, and finally re-exposed to the church air, now feeling colder, might cause the baptized baby’s bodily functions to release – resulting in a different kind of ‘sprinkling rite’ that is unexpected and unsanitary.

The baby being baptized is often accompanied by his or her uninterested and impatient parents, who are eagerly awaiting the celebration to end so they can get home and get the chicken on the grill going for the real celebration, and proud grandparents who are forcing their son and daughter in-law (or vise versa) to get their child baptized so the kid doesn’t go to Hell. The parents, particularly the mother, would have preferred a more intimate private ceremony with friends and close family, performed in the back of the church, under dim lights, without people they don’t know, without music, without all the fuss of the mass, and at a time that is more convenient – perhaps on a day that isn’t cutting into their Sunday family time.

The baptismal ceremony is concluded when the father of the baptized gives the celebrating priest an envelope stuffed with cash as payment for the priest’s services. There after, the parish only sees this family on Christmas and Easter until the child is ready to make his or her first communion.

Though this might be the reality experienced in some Catholic Churches, it hardly echoes the reality of what happens at baptism and what baptism is. Baptism is the sacrament that enters the believer as a member into the mystical Body of Christ. It is the gateway to life that gives the Christian access to the other sacraments. The sacrament is not just about washing away original sin, but it is also about restoring the relationship between the believer, God through Christ, and fellow humanity that cannot be restored by any other means. Baptism is not just about life, but it is also about death as it is through baptism that the Christian enters into communion with Christ’s death and resurrection: the believer dies and goes down into the tomb and rises as a new creation in Christ. “The Baptized have ‘put on Christ.’”

It is true that the sacrament happens to a person; however, the sacrament is not solely for the individual. Every sacrament is for the edification of the entire body of Christ. So as it is a person that is baptized it is the faith of the community that is renewed when they are allowed to participate and experience the celebration. It allows the community of Christ to remember and recall the new life that was given them through baptism into Christ.

Further, the sacrament is cosmological. If the Christian could see what was truly happening in the baptismal font during the sacrament, one would be more advised to don a crash helmet than a baptismal garment. For in the font is the place in the cosmos where God’s love crosses the infinite boundary of death in order to recreate life. In other words, baptism is dangerous.

Lastly, though it is natural water that is used in the exercise of baptism, it is water that one must never dry off from. Never dry off from the waters of baptism.