Nothing Christ did was a nice symbolic gesture.
Because He is God, everything He did and asks us to do actually does something within our souls.
As I was coming into the Catholic Church, I started thinking of all the ways I had been taught that our practices were symbolic.
Communion was symbolic for me growing up. We were just play-pretending at what had happened at the Last Supper.
Baptism symbolically washed away our sins and it was a kind of declaration of our belief in Christ.
And as I sat and thought about Christ and His power, I wondered at all this symbolism. Why would God just make things symbolic? In effect, what was being taught to me is that Christ didn’t really have the power to affect change.
Why would what Christ instituted—namely the Seven Sacraments—be nothing more than nice gestures meant to show our belief and devotion?
It was then that I realized that this way of thinking couldn’t be. Christ wanted us to engage in the Sacraments because they actually do something—something really happens when we use the correct form and matter.
I was being taught to limit God’s power and just trust in my own feelings. Did it feel good to be baptized? Did it feel good to reenact the Last Supper and pretend like I was there? Sure.
Christ gets baptized in the Jordan River not because He needed His sins washed away and He needed to become a Son of God infused with the Three Theological Virtues and gifts of the Holy Spirit. He did it because He was showing us just how important it is.
Why is baptism so important? Because it actually washes sins out of our soul, it actually makes us sons and daughters of God, it actually leaves an indelible mark on our soul marking us forever, we are actually infused with virtues and gifts, and it actually opens the door for us to receive the other Sacraments.
There is power, incredible, mighty power, in the Sacraments, Catholic Pilgrims. Jesus did not come to give us mere symbolic gestures. He came to transform our lives and the Sacraments have the power to do just that.
Have a blessed Feast of the Baptism of the Lord.
