The Refining Day 7: Your Baptism Still Has Power

If you are a cradle Catholic like me, the only memories of your Baptism, if any, have been strung together by old photos and stories from family who were present.

I have vivid memories of both my First Holy Communion and my Confirmation. Both felt like powerful experiences of receiving the Holy Spirit that I still reflect on today. Because I was baptized as a baby, however, I do not remember experiencing anything. It is a sacrament I don’t often think about because I have no real memories to look back on.

However, the sacrament of Baptism is where all graces we possess and our very identity has their roots. It is in Baptism that we become a Son of God, freed from the chains of sin and death. Baptism allows us to live in the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love. In Baptism, we are reborn. Just as birth is the beginning of our physical life on Earth, baptism is the beginning of our spiritual l life, which stretches beyond our physical death on this earth.

Further, Baptism is not some “one and done” deal that we leave in our past. Baptism creates in us a fountain of grace we can continually draw upon as we rely on and cooperate with the Holy Spirit. If we ignore the graces of our Baptism, they remain locked up within, left to wither and die. Dr. Bob Schuchts speaks about the need for our participation with the graces freely given in Baptism in his book Be Transformed, when he quotes Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa: “Catholic theology can help us understand how a sacrament can be valid and legal but ‘unreleased’…if its fruit remains bound or unbound. … Sacraments are not magic rites that act mechanically, without people’s knowledge or collaboration. … The fruit of the sacrament depends wholly on divine grace, however this divine grace does not act without the ‘yes’—the consent and affirmation—of the person.”

In Baptism, we have been given the power of the Spirit. We have been given access to the same grace bestowed on Jesus Christ as a Son of God. Within our very souls is grace that we cannot even fathom.

I don’t know about you, but I know that I walk around day to day, week to week, like an orphan facing the challenges and evils in our world without acknowledging the power and grace God has freely given me. I forget the power of my own words that exist because of the power of the words God has spoken over me. I forget that my identity has been sealed in Christ, and I live in the wound of rejection, questioning my own worth, purpose, and security.

I so often do not live in the graces of my Baptism. I do not allow the graces of Christ’s love to pierce my heart so that I can walk in freedom.

This Lent, as we prepare for the Resurrection of Christ, let the reality of your Baptism pierce your heart. Let the love of God change you. You are not alone or defenseless in this world, for you are clothed in the power of Jesus’s sacrifice for you.