Selected quotes of Pope Benedict XVI offered daily for prayer and reflection….

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Baptism
 


"You are my beloved Son" (Lk 3: 22).
In Baptism, the Heavenly Father also repeats these words for each one of these infants. He says: "You are my child". Baptism is adoption and admission into God's family, into communion with the Most Holy Trinity, into communion with the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. For this very reason, Baptism should be administered in the Name of the Most Holy Trinity. These words are not merely a formula; they are reality. They mark the moment when your children are reborn as children of God. From being the children of human parents, they also become the children of God in the Son of the living God.

 
Homily
Mass in the Sistine Chapel and Baptisms
Feast of the Baptism of the Lord
7 January 2007

 
 
 
Baptism
 


In Baptism we surrender ourselves, we place our lives in his hands, and so we can say with Saint Paul, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” If we offer ourselves in this way, if we accept, as it were, the death of our very selves, this means that the frontier between death and life is no longer absolute. On either side of death we are with Christ and so, from that moment forward, death is no longer a real boundary.

 
Homily
Easter Vigil
Holy Saturday 2007

 
 
 
Baptism
 


"We have been baptized" is a passive. No one can baptize himself, he needs the other. No one can become Christian on his own. Becoming Christian is a passive process. Only by another can we be made Christians and this "other" who makes us Christians, who gives us the gift of faith, is in the first instance the community of believers, the Church. From the Church we receive faith, Baptism. Unless we let ourselves be formed by this community we do not become Christians. An autonomous, self-produced Christianity is a contradiction in itself. In the first instance, this "other" is the community of believers, the Church, yet in the second instance this community does not act on its own either, according to its own ideas and desires. The community also lives in the same passive process: Christ alone can constitute the Church. Christ is the true giver of the sacraments. This is the first point: no one baptizes himself, no one makes himself a Christian. We become Christians

 
General Audience
10 December 2008

 
 
 
Baptism
 


In Baptism we give ourselves over to Christ – he takes us unto himself, so that we no longer live for ourselves, but through him, with him and in him; so that we live with him and thus for others.

 
Homily
Easter Vigil
Holy Saturday, 2007

 
 
 
Baptism
 


Baptism... is a sharing in the death and resurrection of Christ. We die to sin, and we rise with Christ to a new life of mystical union with him. Washed clean in the purifying waters, we emerge sanctified and justified, and we “put on” Christ. Through Baptism, the believer becomes a “new creature”, renewed in the Holy Spirit, and incorporated through the same Spirit into the one body of Christ.

 
General Audience
Vatican's Paul VI Auditorium
10 December 2008

 
 
 
Baptism
 


Through Baptism we give back to God that which came from Him. A child is not the property of its parents, but is freely ... entrusted to their responsibility by the Creator that they may help it become a free child of God.

 
Baptism of Infants
Sistine Chapel
11 January 2009

 
 
 
Baptism
 


The early Church described Baptism as 'fotismos', as the Sacrament of illumination, as a communication of light, and linked it inseparably with the resurrection of Christ. In Baptism, God says to the candidate: “Let there be light!” The candidate is brought into the light of Christ. Christ now divides the light from the darkness. In him we recognize what is true and what is false, what is radiance and what is darkness. With him, there wells up within us the light of truth, and we begin to understand.

 
Homily
Easter Vigil
Holy Saturday
11 April 2009

 
 
 
Baptism
 


Baptism is more than a bath, a purification. It is more than becoming part of a community. It is a new birth. A new beginning in life.
In Baptism we have been “grafted” onto Christ by likeness to his death. In Baptism we give ourselves over to Christ – he takes us unto himself, so that we no longer live for ourselves, but through him, with him and in him; so that we live with him and thus for others.
In Baptism we surrender ourselves, we place our lives in his hands, and so we can say with Saint Paul, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” If we offer ourselves in this way, if we accept, as it were, the death of our very selves, this means that the frontier between death and life is no longer absolute.

 
Homily
Easter Vigil
Holy Saturday, 2008

 

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