During his Angelus Address yesterday afternoon, His Holiness Pope Francis asked the faithful gathered in St. Peter's Square a question he has asked them before:
Which of you knows the date of your baptism? Certainly, not all of you. Therefore, I invite you to go and search for the date, asking, for example, your parents, your grandparents, your godparents, or going into the parish. It is very important to know, because it is a date to celebrate: it is the date of our rebirth as children of God.
Last year on the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, Pope Francis said, "Remember what I asked you, to look for the date of your Baptism, this
way each one of us will be able to say: I was baptized on this day."
As early as 8 January 2014, Pope Francis said during a Wednesday General Audience Address:
Pope Francis keeps talking about the importance of knowing the date of our Baptism into Christ (mine is March 26th) and of celebrating it - and rightly so - but is anyone listening? Three years in a row now, Pope Francis has asked you to learn the date of your Baptism and to celebrate it. Are you listening?I have asked this question two or three times already, here, in this square: who among you knows the date of your Baptism, raise your hands. It is important to know the day on which I was immersed in that current of Jesus' salvation. And I will allow myself to give you some advice... but, more than advice, a task for today. Today, at home, go look, ask about the date of your Baptism and that way you will keep in mind that most beautiful day of Baptism. To know the date of our Baptism is to know a blessed day. The danger of not knowing is that we can lose awareness of what the Lord has done in us, the memory of the gift we have received. Thus, we end up considering it only as an event that took place in the past – and not by our own will but by that of our parents – and that it has no impact on the present. We must reawaken the memory of our Baptism.
That's sounds great for baptized cradle Catholics. I'm a convert and only know an approximate date for my baptism. I can only celebrate that I was baptized not the exact day. Protestant churches do not keep records like the RC Church.
ReplyDeleteJanuary 28, 1973. It was a 10th-grader in high school, my parents weren't believing in infant baptism when I was an infant. My baptism was by a former Lutheran minister, turned evangelical-fundamentalist-charismatic. The sanctuary was a former Baptist church, and had the baptismal a level up from, and behind the dais, behind a curtain. The curtain was open. The baptismal was chest deep in warm water. This happened at the evening service that Sunday. The congregation was singing Psalm 48 from the King James Version of the Bible:
ReplyDelete48 Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised in the city of our God, in the mountain of his holiness.
2 Beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth, is mount Zion, on the sides of the north, the city of the great King.
It was like it happened yesterday. Who could forget that?
November 20,1955 ,I was only a few weeks old. Every year I thank my parents for Baptizing me, and have for several years. I am truly blessed.
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