Sr. Mary Martha Becnel, OPMy first year in the convent, I remember being shocked during our class on the Catechism when the sister teaching us said, “The best day of your life was the day of your baptism.”
“The day of my baptism?” I thought. “Wait a minute. Not the day I entered the convent? Not the day I will make vows? Not the day I received First Communion? But the day of my baptism?” I knew I must be missing some understanding of the importance of this sacrament.
My middle school students are likewise taken aback whenever I tell them that the day of their baptism was the best day of their lives. I’m sure some of them are thinking, “But I was a baby; I can’t even remember it!” How could something that many of us received before we were able to make any decisions of our own be the most significant event of our lives?
A priest baptizes an infant at Christ the King Church in Irondequoit, N.Y., in this 2007 file photo. In the Catholic rite the minister uses the invocation "I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit."(CNS file photo/Mike Crupi, Catholic Courier)
While the depths of the graces we have each received in our baptism can never be fathomed, it seems to make the most sense to my students when I go straight to the heart of the matter. The day we were baptized was the day we became children of God; at the moment of our baptism, God Himself came to live within us. At our baptism, we became a son or daughter of the Father; a brother or sister, disciple, and member of Jesus Christ; and a temple of the Holy Spirit. We were given to participate in the very life of the Triune God.
How easy it can be to get caught up with life and forget this foundation of our identity as Christians! So often we find our identity in things other than God — in our career, in our relationships, in the number of charitable deeds we perform, in how much we pray. But nothing that we do, even what we do for God, is really the essence of who we are. Lent is a chance for us to be renewed in the graces of our baptism and in our true identity as sons and daughters of God.
This Sunday — the third Sunday of Lent — begins the first of the Three Scrutinies, which are a time of intense preparation for those who will come into the Church at Easter. Let us spiritually join with those who will receive God’s life in baptism or who will seek to live that life more fully by coming into full communion with the Catholic Church. Let us seek with them a deepening of our relationship with God.
On Easter, we will all renew our baptismal promises. Lent can be for us a time of preparation and purification so that we will be freer at Easter once again to renounce sin and Satan and to proclaim our faith in the Triune God and His Church. May this Lent help us to find our identity not in worldly success, not in recognition from others, not even in our pious practices, but where it truly lies, in the glorious fact that we are sons and daughters of the Father through the grace of our baptism.
Sr. Mary Martha Becnel is a member of the Ann Arbor-based Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist.
