Cathedral of St. John the Baptist at 1900 Carlton Rd., Parma, OH 44134-3129 US - A Renewal of Baptism
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Christian baptism has washed and purified us. It has abolished original sin in us and made a new creature of us. We were probably infants when we were baptized; baptismal grace was then a divine response, not to our personal request, but to the faith of those who brought us to baptism and also to the faith of the whole church when it accepted us. This baptismal grace was, then, in some way provisional and conditional; it needed us, of our own free choice as we grew up and became conscious, to confirm the act of our baptism. Epiphany is, above all, the feast of baptism, not only of Jesus' baptism, but also of our own. It is a wonderful opportunity for us to renew in spirit the baptism that we received, and to revive the grace which was conferred on us. For the sacramental graces, even if interrupted and suspended by sin, can become alive in us again, if we turn sincerely to God. At this feast of Epiphany, let us ask God to wash us again – spiritually, not actually – in the waters of baptism; let us drown the old, the sinful, creature, in them, for baptism is a mystical death; let us cross the Red Sea which separates captivity from freedom and let us immerse ourselves with Jesus in the Jordan to be washed not by the Precursor, but by Jesus himself.