Unity in Baptism

When I became Catholic, I was asked one question regarding my baptism: Have you been baptized in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit? I was not asked my age at the time of baptism. I was not asked if I was baptized Presbyterian or Wesleyan or Baptist. I was not asked if someone sprinkled me, dunked me, or poured water over me. I was only asked if I had been baptized in the name of the Triune God.

In St. Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians (4:5), we are told that there is one baptism. In the Gospel of Matthew (28:19), Jesus tells his disciples to “go into all nations, baptizing them in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

Since there is one baptism, and it had been done in the Name of the Triune God, there was no need to do it again. While it did not mean the Church and I were completely and perfectly One yet (as in one faith and one doctrine), it did mean that the miracle of unity had begun.

In the third chapter of the Gospel of John, Jesus tells Nicodemus that he must be born again, and Our Lord goes on to describe this new birth by saying, “Amen, amen, I say to you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit.”

The Disciples called the crowds to baptism, and the people presented themselves to be baptized – they and their entire household with them. We see five references in the New Testament to the baptism of entire households (so that unity can encompass everyone under the roof). Peter baptized the household of Cornelius (Acts 11:14). In Philippi, Paul baptized the household of Lydia and the household of the jailer (Acts 16:15, 33). He also baptized the household of Crispus, the ruler of the synagogue in Corinth. In his First Letter to the Corinthians, he refers to baptism of the household of Stephanas (1:16). Here’s something you may not realize – in the Greek, the word for household included everybody. Grandparent, parent, teen, child, and infant. It even included the servants and their families. Nowhere in the Bible does it turn away someone on account of age.

Through Baptism, we are born into the family, and we learn to walk and skip and run in the Spirit. We are taught “to preserve the unity,” by embracing the “One Body and One Sprit,” which we have because of our “One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism; One God and Father of all” (Ephesians 4:3-6).

Unity begins with baptism, it grows by the Power of the Holy Spirit, and it finds fullness in the arms of the Church.

(article by Denise Bossert first published by One Bread Lay Apostolate at http://www.1bread.catholic.org/)