St Paul, this weekend, speaks of the great mystery of our baptism: "Brothers and sisters: Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?" (Rm 6: 3) When we think of baptism of infants or adults, as well as our annual renewal of baptism at Easter, we need to make this connection with the sacrificial death of Jesus given out of love for the Father. Baptism changes us just as it brought about change in Jesus. It leaves behind an old life to be given a pledge of the new. This death means we cannot be conformed to this world with all of its sin and pride. It gives us all the promise of glory which makes sense of suffering and helps us to live towards and with others in a way that we could not otherwise do. In other words, baptism makes a capable of agape - self-giving love, in a way that the world cannot. Let us strive, as St Paul exhorts us, to be worthy of the baptism we have received: "Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life" (Rm 6: 4) "... So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus." (Rm 6: 11)
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