Baby Baptisms

Defending the value of the circumcision of Christ

06/24/2018

Luke 1:57-66, 80 When the time arrived for Elizabeth to have her child she gave birth to a son. Her neighbors and relatives heard that the Lord had shown his great mercy toward her, and they rejoiced with her. When they came on the eighth day to circumcise the child, they were going to call him Zechariah after his father, but his mother said in reply, "No. He will be called John." But they answered her, "There is no one among your relatives who has this name." So they made signs, asking his father what he wished him to be called. He asked for a tablet and wrote, "John is his name," and all were amazed. Immediately his mouth was opened, his tongue freed, and he spoke blessing God. Then fear came upon all their neighbors, and all these matters were discussed throughout the hill country of Judea. All who heard these things took them to heart, saying, "What, then, will this child be?" For surely the hand of the Lord was with him. The child grew and became strong in spirit, and he was in the desert until the day of his manifestation to Israel.

In honor of the Nativity (or birthday) of St. John the Baptist, I would like to deliver a different kind of homily than my usual fire and brimstone sermon. Since St. John preached about baptism, and I’d like to preach an apology why Catholics baptize babies. Now, I’m not going to apologize for this Catholic practice – as if I’m saying I’m sorry for it and hope it doesn’t offend anyone. Rather, quite the contrary, I would like to defend this Catholic practice and show why it’s laudable. That’s the traditional meaning of the word, “apology,” (in Latin, apologia) that is, it is a defense of something, giving arguments in favor of something. I’m going to lawyer up today.

In 1865, Blessed John Henry Newman wrote his eloquent essay called Apologia Pro Vita Sua, which is Latin and means “a defense of one’s own life.” Newman was a towering intellectual teaching in Oxford, England and an Anglican. But prayer and study lead him to abandon the Anglican Communion and embrace Catholicism. In fact, he was so well-respected and admired that in the wake of his conversion, thousands of other people became Catholic as well. His apology explained his reasons for converting to Catholicism, and my apology today offers a few reasons why Catholics baptize babies.

But first you should know that this Catholic custom of baby baptism is highly controversial in many Christian corners. Most, if not all non-denominational churches question it and criticize it. For bible Christians, only professing faith in Jesus as your Lord and Savior saves you, baptism does not. One non-denominational minister put it starkly: “To count on one’s baptism, whether as an infant or as an adult, as the basis for standing before God is to trust in a false hope.” He went on: “Only personal faith in the crucified and risen Savior saves a person from sin and hell.” I remember a brief conversation shortly after Pope John Paul II died with the clerk at a grocery store. After he expressed his condolences, he exclaimed, “Now, there’s one Catholic that’s going to heaven!” Clearly, he thought most Catholics would not make it. This is why baby baptism needs an apology, a defense. Let me suggest three points for your prayerful pondering.

First, here’s what Catholics do in India. We baptize babies at exactly eight days after they are born. Why do we do that? Baptism replaced circumcision as the sign of the Covenant. Jews would circumcise a boy in the Old Testament 8 days after birth to show he belonged to the Chosen People, so baptism in the New Testament would be 8 days after birth to signify who belongs to Christ. The New Testament mirrors the Old Testament, even as it fulfills it and supersedes it. St. Paul explains how baptism supplants circumcision in his letter to the Colossians 2: 11-12, writing: “In [Christ] you were also circumcised with a circumcision not administered by hand…[but] with the circumcision of Christ. You were buried with him in baptism.” In other words, the new circumcision of Christ is baptism, and that’s why I was baptized 8 days after I was born in New Delhi. I know the exact day I was baptized, July 21, 1969.

Secondly, did you know Catholics believe in three kinds of baptism? The most commonplace baptism involves pouring water on someone or immersing them. The second type is the “baptism of desire.” Let’s say someone is preparing to be baptized, and has completed all the classes, but tragically dies on the way to church. They were baptized in virtue of their desire to be a Christian. And the third is “baptism of blood.” As you can guess that refers to those who are persecuted and killed for believing in Jesus even if they have not been formally baptized with water. Their blood baptizes them. But St. John the Baptist received an utterly unique baptism while in the womb. Luke 1:15 records: “He will be filled with the Holy Spirit from his mother’s womb.” John the Baptist was baptized with the circumcision of Christ in the womb. I wonder what our Protestant friends would think of St. John’s own baptism, not as a baby but as an embryo.

And third, ask yourself: what do all parents want to give their children? The answer: all parents want their children to have the best: the best food, the best clothes, the best school, the best friends, the best church, which is why you come to Immaculate Conception! And when do you start providing the best you can? Do you wait until they turn 16, or maybe when they get married, or perhaps you’re planning on leaving them the best as their inheritance after you die? No, of course not. You start to give your children the best when they are born, and even before they are born. Pregnant moms take pre-natal vitamins, they stop drinking, you paint the baby’s room pink or blue or yellow, and so much more, all in an effort to give them the best even before they see the light of day! Well, there is nothing you can give you children better than the circumcision of Christ, the sacrament of baptism. Catholics baptize babies because baptism is the best they can give them.

In the Preface to Newman’s Apologia Pro Vita Sua, he explained his purpose, paraphrased slightly, he said: “I shall account for that phenomenon which to so many seems so [unbelievable], that I should have left ‘my kindred and my father’s house’ for a Church from which I once turned away with dread…a Religion which has flourished through so many ages, among so many nations, amid such varieties of social life, in such contrary classes and conditions of men, and after so many revolutions, political and civil…[a religion that] subdues the reason and overcomes the heart.” In the pages that followed, Newman delivered a daunting defense of the Roman Catholic religion and why he became a Catholic. And that same remarkable religion urges the baptism of babies.

Praised be Jesus Christ!