This final summary of the retreat I gave at Rosary Parish during the first week of Lent concentrates on the renewal of Baptismal promises at Easter and the implications the renewal has for living the Christian life.

During the retreat, I shared an observation with the people making the retreat that was based on my pastoral experience. I told them when a community has sincerely prepared itself to renew Baptismal promises on Easter Sunday, the liturgy of renewal becomes a powerful experience for them and for others.

It gives public witness, communicates that the Spirit is active in the Church and shows that, in a period of history in which evil seems to be everywhere, many people are still responding generously to God’s initiatives.

Our thirst for God 

One of the elements of the Holy Father’s Lenten Message was about God’s thirst for the love of every one of us. When I referred to the Holy Father’s Lenten Message, I asked the people to remember the summary of the first day of our retreat. We considered the theme of our hunger and thirst for God and our need for God.

In his message, the Holy Father offers an image to help us appreciate our thirst for God. He tells us to look at Christ pierced on the cross. It is an image of God himself who begs for the love of his creatures.

The Holy Father states that it is not enough to accept God’s love for us. He teaches us that we must respond to God’s love and to share it with others.

Building on his first Encyclical Letter, Deus Caritas Est, the Holy Father reminds us of the distinction between agape – the self-giving love of a person who looks exclusively to the good of the other and eros – the love of a person who desires to possess what he or she lacks and yearns for: union with the one loved.

God’s love for us, the Pope teaches, is both agape as proven on the cross and eros as proven by the Scriptural evidence that shows God’s desire to obtain a yes from us to be in relationship with God. The Holy Father concludes, “the revelation of God’s eros toward his people is in reality the supreme expression of his agape.”

Implications of papal teaching for Baptism

It is in Baptism that we are given access to the intimacy of Trinitarian love. The memorial of our Baptism and the opportunity to renew our Baptismal promises challenges us to come out of ourselves, to open ourselves in trust to the plan of the Father for us and to imitate the self giving of Jesus made available to us in the Eucharist.

Baptism inserts us into the family of God. It offers us communion with Christ who is life and gives us hope for eternal life. Baptism is a gift, but it is a special type of gift. It is a gift that must be accepted and lived.

Our response to God’s initiative in Baptism means that we are firm in our decision to say yes to the Lord as required by the terms of the covenant and to say no to all that is incompatible with true life in Christ.

The renewal of Baptismal promises

In all the sacraments of the Church, precise formulas are used to convey the meaning of what we celebrate. Unfortunately, we can become so familiar with the formulas that the words, even if we understand them, may not mean much to us.

That is the reason why preparation is so important. We must think and pray more about what we are to celebrate so we can celebrate it in spirit and truth. Pope Benedict XVI puts it this way: “We must think more deeply about what we say no to in Baptism so we can understand better what we want to say yes to in Baptism.”

In the liturgy of renewal there are three renunciations and three affirmations. The three renunciations are at the heart of living the gift of Baptism. Each renunciation helps us to understand what we say yes to at Baptism.

The empty promises of Satan referred to in the renunciations are destroying people in modern society. They include the promise of a false life in abundance, of an ‘apparent’ life that is so visible in our neo-pagan world, a false freedom with its permissiveness e.g. the anti-culture of drugs, a flight from reality to an understanding of sexuality that reduces people who have a right to personal love to becoming objects of pleasure and contempt for others and for solidarity with the poor.

Pope Benedict describes the affirmations at Baptism in this way: “The affirmations at Baptism concern the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. We are saying yes to the living God, a God Creator and a creating reason who gives meaning to the universe.

We are saying yes to Christ, a God who did not remain hidden and who shows us the path of life. We are saying yes to the Holy Spirit who causes the communion of the Church and is part of our daily life.”  

The challenge of Baptism

Recently, the Holy Father said that the Catholic faith is not a list of prohibitions. It is a list of affirmations that require choices. The Catechism of the Catholic Church reminds us that Baptism delivers no one from all the weaknesses of nature. (CCC, N. 978) Quite the opposite is true!

After Baptism we must still face temptation, human weakness, the habits flowing from prior sinful behaviour and the results of bad spiritual decisions in our present lives. The Catechism describes the process of saying no to evil and saying yes to God quite accurately. The Catechism calls it a battle.

Success in the battle depends on grace and daily prayer. In prayer, we open ourselves to listening to the wisdom of God. In the gift of grace, which is usually obtained through persevering prayer, we receive God’s strength which enables us to be faithful to the covenant and to find peace.

Conclusion

We connect with the Resurrection through the sacraments of the Church. In Baptism, we become part of the new creation by being incorporated into the Body of Christ, the Church. We participate in the new life of grace that initiates the ultimate return of all creation back to God. 

At Easter, the Church asks each believer to renew from the heart their Baptismal promises as a personal recommitment to the risen Lord. I encourage everyone to accept the invitation of the Church and to respond to the opportunity of recommitment that is provided by the Easter liturgy.

I remind everyone that to the degree we sincerely renew our Baptismal promises (renunciations and affirmations), to that same degree will we experience the meaning, joy and peace of Easter.