we're not just coming together as a community to welcome this new baby we're not just gathering to to wish the baby well i mean those are all good things but the sacrament of baptism is something objective [Music] [Applause] when i was involved in full-time pastoral ministry many years ago saint paul lacrosse church outside chicago one of my favorite things to do were baptisms and i put baptisms there in the plural because they hardly ever took place one at a time typically when i would baptize there'd be 10 or 12 kids so i would come out
two o'clock on a sunday afternoon there'd 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 and 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 love doing baptisms and 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
what a couple weeks ago now when i had the privilege of baptizing uh 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 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 you know i baptize you in the name of the father son and holy spirit okay so uh fatherhood is young enough to have been baptized at a time when there were video cameras and so on
and he went back and watched the video of his own baptism and discovered to his 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 it was 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 christie we say in the very person of christ the eye therefore is the eye 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 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 all already present we're not just coming together as a community to welcome this new baby we're not just gathering to to wish the baby well i mean those are all good things but the sacrament of baptism is something objective the classic definition you know sacraments 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 the 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 you know so the case of fatherhood i told the folks gathered there is a good way of reminding ourselves of this objective density to baptism into 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 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 and i told that that familiar story of the egg that that rolls out of the of the nest of of an eagle and it falls to the ground but it rolls among a group of chickens and so the eagle is is hatched but he doesn't know his
his eagle parents his eagle siblings all he knows is the world of chickens these little birds you know pecking around the ground and never flying and living in a very you know narrow range and so the eagle who's born to fly and to soar and cover hundreds of miles grows up pecking the ground and never flying well then i continued according to the story one day a great eagle flies past and looks down and sees amidst these chickens this eagle and he comes to the ground and he says to him what is the matter with
you why are you pecking around the ground like a chicken you're an eagle and and the the eagle is well i i don't i don't know i've never never seen this i never realized my own capacities and so then the adult eagle draws him into that world and teaches them how to spread his wings and how to fly so i told the folks gathered there 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 but now the 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 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 you know whatever the popular culture is throwing up at the moment they they
seek wealth and power and pleasure and all the little petty goods of the world and you know 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 see 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 similacrum 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'd be the true american revolution thanks for watching if you enjoyed that video i encourage you to share it and be sure to subscribe to my youtube channel
