I ask you to kindly explain to me the sacrament of Baptism and the change it brings to a person

Good morning Father Angelo,

I ask you to kindly explain to me the sacrament of Baptism and the change it brings to a person… In short, the divine life.

Thank you.

Anna

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Priest’s answer

Dear Anna,

1. to understand the meaning of baptism it is necessary to start from what Jesus said: “No one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit” (Jn 3:5)

Entering the kingdom of God means entering the very life of God, which is of a supernatural order.

To enter this life it is necessary to be proportionate to it.

And since there is an infinite disproportion between the natural order, to which we belong, and the supernatural order, it is necessary that we be made proportionate by God himself to this new life.

2. No one can fill this disproportion by himself because, not having it, the supernatural proportion cannot be given to himself.

It is necessary that God, who is in the supernatural order, proportions us.

3. God does this by infusing grace in us, which is precisely an irradiation or communication of his divine life that already allows us to think as God thinks, that is, according to supernatural criteria (here is faith), to act with the supernatural help of God (here is hope) and to love with the very heart of God which is of the supernatural order (here is charity).

4. Baptism is a rite in which two realities, water and the Holy Spirit, have their essential importance.

The Holy Spirit first of all, because it makes us become by grace what Christ is by nature. That is, children of God by adoption.

By nature we are children of our parents and for this reason we have human nature.

We become children of God only if God takes us and adopts us as children, making us participants in his divine life in the present life and in the future.

5. We do not become children of God in a parallel and separate way from Christ, but by being grafted into the Son, in Christ.

Thus the life of Christ and his divine merits become ours in full title, also because Christ has deserved them for us, to give them to us, so that they become our wealth.

For this reason, by becoming children, we also become heirs of God, of that life of God that is called paradise.

6. This unique spiritual rebirth is accompanied by an indelible sign that the Holy Spirit traces in the soul and that we call character or seal.

Precisely because we are consecrated, we become participants in the priesthood of Christ, in that offering that He made to God the Father once and for all for all of us.

This means that we too acquire the power to consecrate our actions, to make them sacred, that is, a living offering in praise of God, in expiation of sins and in imploration of grace.

It is the holy priesthood in which we are instituted, according to the beautiful expression of Saint Peter.

7. The second essential reality of baptism is water.

Accompanied by the Holy Spirit and by the words uttered by the minister of baptism, it has its irreplaceable importance: it is that external element that makes us visibly belong to the Kingdom of God, to the Church.

And it confers the possibility and the right to access all those other sacraments that nourish and increase this divine life and help recover it if it has been lost.

8. By becoming members of the Church, we become “fellow citizens of the saints and relatives of God”.

Not only the life of the Son of God, but also the life and merits of the Blessed Virgin and all the Saints, by virtue of the Holy Spirit become our life and our merits.

All grafted into Christ we become his mystical body.

9. This is what is given in baptism and which in the catechetical formulation is expressed as follows: baptism is that sacrament that makes us children of God by adoption, members of the church and imprints the character. At the same time it remits sins, confers sanctifying grace, makes us heirs of heaven and capable of receiving the other sacraments.

With the hope that the grace received in baptism grows in you more and more, I bless you and remember you in prayer.

Father Angelo

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