Upon being baptized, “this child now has as much right to heaven as Jesus Christ himself!” writes Father Hawkswell. (CNS photo/L'Osservatore Romano via Reuters)
Birth
of St. John the
Baptist
First
Reading: Is
49:1-6
Second
Reading: Acts
13:22-26
Gospel
Reading: Lk
1:57-66, 80
Sunday is “the foundation and centre of the whole liturgical year,” said Vatican II. No other feast or solemnity is observed on Sunday unless it “be truly of the greatest importance.”
Such is the birth of John the Baptist, whom the Church honours this Sunday as “a prophet,” “a light to the nations,” “great in the sight of the Lord,” “filled with the Holy Spirit” even before birth, “set apart from other men,” and “marked with special favour.” In particular, she recognizes the importance of John’s baptism.
(Notice that the date, June 24, is six months before Christmas, the birth of Jesus, because at Jesus’ conception, Gabriel told Mary that John’s mother Elizabeth was already “in her sixth month.”)
The Catechism of the Catholic Church calls baptism “the basis of the whole Christian life, the gateway to life in the Spirit, and the door which gives access to the other sacraments.” By baptism we are not only “freed from sin,” but also “reborn as sons of God.” After baptism, “God calls man his son, and man calls God ‘Father.’”
From the Holy Trinity, where the Father-Son relationship exists from all eternity, “rays of fatherhood” shine forth, said Pope St. John Paul II. However, they meet “resistance” in “original sin,” whose effects we inherit like a congenital disease. In that sin, Satan tried to abolish fatherhood, making Adam and Eve doubt God’s love and leaving them with a sense of only “the master-slave relationship.”
Baptism of repentance, then, in which we reject Satan, is a pre-requisite for baptism in the Holy Spirit, in which we are re-born with God as our Father. That is why persons about to be baptized are asked, first, whether they reject sin, and, second, whether they believe in God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.
John’s baptism was a baptism of repentance only. It forgave sin, but it did not confer supernatural life. Accordingly, Jesus said that John was the “greatest” born of woman, but less than “the least born into the Kingdom of God.” To enter God’s Kingdom, we must be not only freed from sin, but also “begotten of water and Spirit.”
“John baptized with water,” Jesus told his apostles shortly before his Ascension, “but within a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.”
“Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you became believers?” St. Paul asked the Ephesians. They answered, “We have not so much as heard that there is a Holy Spirit.” Paul persisted: “Well, how were you baptized?” and they replied, “With the baptism of John.”
“John’s baptism was a baptism of repentance,” St. Paul explained. “He used to tell the people about the one who would come after him in whom they were to believe; that is, Jesus.” Accordingly, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus, and, as Paul laid his hands on them, “the Holy Spirit came down on them.”
Now it is useful to distinguish between baptism of repentance and baptism in the Holy Spirit, but we must realize that the Christian sacrament of baptism accomplishes both: forgiveness of all sin and re-birth into supernatural life. If we have been validly baptized, we have been baptized in the Holy Spirit.
“By baptism all sins are forgiven: original sin and all personal sins, as well as all punishment for sin,” the Catechism says. Nothing remains in us that would impede our “entry into the Kingdom of God.” At the same time, the Holy Spirit “communicates to us, intimately and personally, the life that originates in the Father and is offered to us in the Son.”
Once, after baptizing a baby, I said impulsively, “This child now has as much right to heaven as Jesus Christ himself!” It sounds incredible, but it is true: after baptism, we can truly say “our Father”: Jesus’ and ours.