The best day of your life. What comes to mind when you hear these six words? The best day of your life. Think about it for a moment. What was the best day of your life? What comes to mind for some of us might be the day we graduated from school, the day we moved into our first home, our wedding day or the day we became a parent. While each of these days were great, there was a day better than all of these.
Whether we remember the day or not, the day of our baptism was the font from which everything else in our lives flowed. This is the day we were welcomed into God’s family. With our baptism, we became adopted sons and daughters of God. And God our Father knows that one of the greatest gifts you can give a child is the gift of a sibling.
Our God is so good to us that in our baptism, we receive the gift of Jesus as our brother by adoption as well. What makes the day of our baptism all the more great is that on the day we were baptized, we gained 2.2 billion brothers and sisters in Christ here on earth and we gain new brothers and sisters in Christ every day when the waters of baptism touch the heads of new Christians. This is how our spiritual family, the Body of Christ, the Church, grows and becomes stronger.
This day of our baptism is made even greater because in addition to joining the body of believers here on this earth, we also become united with our brothers and sisters in Christ who have come before us, the body of the believers in heaven, the saints. Thanks to the day of our baptism, we gain brothers and sisters from the past, the present and the future.
This day of our baptism day is such an important day in our lives that some of us even name our child after the church where we were baptized. The day when Margaret’s mother was baptized at St. Margaret’s Church had a huge impact on her life. The day when Margaret Rose’s father was baptized at St. Rose Church had a huge impact on his life. The impact their baptisms have had on their lives was so huge that it is impacting the lives of another generation and it is resulting in the body of believers growing here today with the addition of this soon-to-be newest member of God’s holy family.
In today’s Gospel reading, we heard that when Jesus was baptized, God the Father said, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.” For each of the guys here, when we became God’s adoptive sons on our baptism day, God spoke these same words into our hearts, saying to each of us, “You are my beloved son; with you I am well pleased. For each of the ladies here, when you became God’s adoptive daughters on your baptism day, God spoke into each of your hearts saying, “You are my beloved daughter, with you I am well pleased.” As Margaret Rose, hears God whisper these same words in her heart today, let us hear God’s words to each of us on our baptism day echo in our hearts.
Let this echo in our own hearts strengthen our own faith, because God put us each in Margaret Rose’s life for a reason. The reason is something bigger than helping to raise up just a nice person. The reason God put each of us in Margaret Rose’s life is so much bigger than this. Today, we are forging a new generation of saints.
I imagine that after we have lived, God-willing, long, fulfilling lives here on this earth, one of the greatest parts of arriving in heaven is going to be seeing all the prayers these brothers and sisters of ours said for us and what a difference these prayers made in our very own lives, in helping us get to heaven.
We can help make this baptism day for Margaret Rose become the best day of her life by living our own lives in a way that makes the following words of Pope Francis ring true. He said, “to be saints is not a privilege for the few, but a vocation for everyone.” My brothers and sisters in Christ, our baptism day is the best day of our lives, because it is the day we each start our lifelong vocation to be saints.