Episode Transcript
[00:00:12] Speaker A: Welcome to the Blessed Sacrament Homilies podcast, where our mission is to help everyone recognize and experience the presence of God. We hope you are nourished and encouraged by the Word. Thank you for joining us.
[00:00:25] Speaker B: The Lord be with you.
A reading from the Holy Gospel According to Luke.
The people were filled with expectation and all were asking in their hearts whether John might be the Christ.
John answered them all, saying, I am baptizing you with water, but one mightier than I is coming. I am not worthy to loosen the thongs of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.
After all, the people had been baptized and Jesus also had been baptized and was praying. Heaven was opened and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven. You are my beloved. With you I am well pleased.
The Gospel of the Lord In a little over a month, it will be 31 years since I was ordained a transitional deacon. And that first weekend after I was ordained a deacon, the pastor of the parish that I had been working in while I was in school said he had a baptism and he wanted to know if I wanted to do it.
And I said, sure, of course, being just a little bit nervous.
And as part of that baptism, after I said yes, he said, well, there's a little bit more you need to know.
He said, this family recently moved here from the Philippines and there are some cultural things that are a bit different.
He said, the first you'll notice right away is there are going to be a lot of godparents. He said, there's not just going to be two, there might be a couple dozen there.
Because supposedly, as he followed up in the culture, the godparents play an important role when that child gets married, of helping to pay for the wedding. So they have lots of them to help spread the. Spread the cost around.
And the second one, the second point that caused me the most trepidation was he said, and I'm not sure this may be like if anybody worked as a mechanic, and their first day on the job, they sent them to the parts department to get elbow grease. I'm not sure if he was just kind of pulling my leg on this or not, but he said, the parents are going to expect that child to cry because it's a sign of original sin going out of the baby. So if the baby doesn't cry, you got to pinch it and make it cry.
Now, that was, to say the least, a bit terrifying.
Thank God the baby screamed bloody murder and I didn't have to do anything.
Well, fast forward 31 years. Last week at 4:00 Mass, I did the last baptism. I'm done.
And over that period, there is a common thread that gets knitted throughout every one of those experiences.
And that common thread is the look on the parent's face as that child is brought in to the church.
And it's hard to describe other than seeing it as a physical manifestation of the same thing we just heard in the Gospel.
You are my beloved child. With you I am well pleased. You can just see that in the faces of every parent that's had their child baptized that I got to experience.
So follow that up with what did God say when you or I were baptized?
The exact same thing God said when Jesus was baptized.
You are my beloved child. With you I am well pleased.
And the reason why that was said at each of our baptisms is because Christ's presence is joined to each one of us.
And that God's love is not conditional.
It's not based on how perfect we are. It's not based on how pious we are.
It's an unconditional love.
And that love never leaves us. Now, that doesn't mean we don't screw up. That doesn't mean we don't sin. That doesn't mean we don't need to be reconciled.
But it does mean that we never, ever have to live our lives in fear.
Because God loves us completely and totally and will forever.
