Transcript

We're not just coming together as a community to welcome this new baby; we're not just gathering to wish the baby well.

I mean, those are all good things, but the sacrament of baptism is something objective.

When I was involved in full-time pastoral ministry many years ago at St. Paul of the Cross Church outside Chicago, one of my favorite things to do was baptisms.

I put baptisms there in the plural because they hardly ever took place one at a time.

Typically, when I would baptize, there would be 10 or 12 kids.

So I would come out at 2 o'clock on a Sunday afternoon, and there would be all the families gathered up in front of the church.

I would do a little kind of introduction and welcome, and then almost on cue, the 12 babies would start crying all at once.

So amidst this happy cacophony, I would kind of shout my way through the various prayers and baptize the babies.

But it was always a joy; I loved doing baptisms.

I must say, since becoming a bishop, I don't have that many opportunities to baptize.

I kind of miss it.

But an exception took place just a couple of weeks ago now when I had the privilege of baptizing Hazel Rose Cummins.

Hazel is the daughter of Doug Cummins and his wife Erica.

Doug is the associate producer here at Word on Fire in Santa Barbara.

So we gathered over at San Roque Church, which is sort of my local parish here in Santa Barbara, and it was a wonderful experience.

But I want to share with you a little bit of what I shared with the small crowd gathered there that day.

I first talked about what I'll call the objective side of baptism, and I used as my point of departure this idea: the now kind of famous case of Father Matthew Hood.

You've probably heard about this young priest from the Archdiocese of Detroit, and the Vatican recently came out with a statement saying that, you know, to be validly baptized, you have to be baptized with the pouring of water or sprinkling and then the words, I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

Okay, so Father Hood is young enough to have been baptized at a time when there were video cameras and so on.

He went back and watched the video of his own baptism and discovered, to his unhappy surprise, that the deacon in question who baptized him didn't say, I baptize you, but rather, We baptize you.

Now, you say, Well, it's just one little word, but see, there's a world of difference there.

Because when the minister is baptizing, he is not operating in his own name or in the name of the community or of the local parish; he's operating in persona Christi, we say, in the very person of Christ.

The I therefore is the I of Christ who baptizes.

Okay, well, once he discovered this, the poor young priest went to his archbishop and said, Archbishop, I think I wasn't validly baptized.

And indeed, that was the case, which in turn meant that he didn't receive First Communion because you've got to be baptized to receive First Communion validly.

He wasn't validly confirmed because that requires baptism, and he wasn't validly ordained because that depends too on your being a baptized person.

Well, long story short, the archbishop in short order baptized him, gave him First Communion, confirmed him, and then finally ordained him.

And you say, Well, okay, that's I guess a happy ending to kind of a quirky story.

But my point again is there's something objective about baptism.

Through these gestures and these words, something happens.

That's the theology of the Church.

We're not just celebrating a grace already present; we're not just coming together as a community to welcome this new baby; we're not just gathering to wish the baby well.

Those are all good things, but the sacrament of baptism is something objective.

The classic definition, you know, a sacrament's a visible sign of an invisible grace.

In this sacrament, through this sacrament, a child or an adult becomes a member of the mystical body, is now adopted, becomes a cell, a molecule, an organ in the mystical body of Christ.

Something objective happens.

If it's just a celebration of an already existing grace or it's just the welcome of the community, well then, I'd paraphrase Flannery O'Connor and say, Well then, the heck with it.

So the case of Father Hood, I told the folks gathered there, is a good way of reminding ourselves of this objective density to baptism and to all the sacraments.

But then, having said that and not for a minute unsaying it, I said there's also a subjective side.

And here's what I meant.

I did it through an appeal to an old story because there were a lot of little people there, a lot of little kids, so I wanted to draw them in.

I told that familiar story of the egg that rolls out of the nest of an eagle and falls to the ground, but it rolls among a group of chickens.

So the eagle is hatched, but he doesn't know his eagle parents or his eagle siblings; all he knows is the world of chickens—these little birds pecking around the ground and never flying, living in a very narrow range.

And so the eagle, who's born to fly and to soar and to cover hundreds of miles, grows up pecking the ground and never flying.

Well, then I continued, and according to the story, one day a great eagle appeared, flies past, and looks down and sees amidst these chickens this eagle.

He comes to the ground and says to them, What is the matter with you?

Why are you pecking around the ground like a chicken?

You're an eagle!

And the eagle responds, I don't know; I've never seen this.

I never realized my own capacities.

And so then the adult eagle draws him into that world and teaches him how to spread his wings and how to fly.

So I told the folks gathered there that this little baby, objectively, through this sacrament, receives the grace of adoption and becomes a member of the mystical body.

Something happens; that's true.

But now the task of the community gathered around this child is to remind her in every way who she is.

See, my complaint, I told them, is that an awful lot of baptized people in our country and around the world are, in fact, children of God.

They are, in fact, destined to be great saints.

They are, in fact, destined to soar.

But the problem is they spend their whole lives pecking around the ground like chickens.

What I mean here is they imitate not the great saints; they imitate whatever the popular culture is throwing up at the moment.

They seek wealth and power and pleasure and all the little petty goods of the world.

And that might make you great in the eyes of the world.

That's like being a great chicken when you're meant to be an eagle.

So I told them, Look, that's your job now.

That's your job is to remind this little girl throughout her life who she is, and she's meant to be a great saint and not a pathetic simulacrum of what she's supposed to become.

So that's how I read together the objective side.

And if you want the subjective side of baptism, and I'll close with this: as I mentioned, still, I think it's true that most people in our country are baptized Christians.

Most people are objectively sons and daughters of God, meant to be great saints.

The trouble is, most of us are pecking around the ground like chickens.

If every baptized person in this country realized who he or she is meant to be, that would be the true American revolution.

Thanks for watching!

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