SPEAKER_00: In Victor's In Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, there's a moment so decisive that the entire story turns on it.
SPEAKER_00: Jean Valjean, you may remember, a man hardened by prison, injustice, and survival, is welcomed into the home of a Catholic bishop.
SPEAKER_00: He's fed, he's given a bed, he's treated not as a criminal but as a man with dignity.
SPEAKER_00: And yet still trapped in the instincts of his old life, Jean repays mercy with betrayal.
SPEAKER_00: He steals the bishop's silver and disappears into the night.
SPEAKER_00: When he is caught and dragged by back by the police, Jean knows exactly what awaits him.
SPEAKER_00: Everything, his future, his freedom, his life depends on what the bishop will say next.
SPEAKER_00: And then comes the miracle.
SPEAKER_00: The bishop looks at Jean Valjean, not with fear, not with anger, but with the authority that only mercy possesses.
SPEAKER_00: And he says, Oh yes, I gave him the silver.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, I'm glad that he returned because I also gave him the silver candlesticks, but he forgot to take them.
SPEAKER_00: In that very moment, Jean Valjean is not merely spared punishment, he is reborn.
SPEAKER_00: Grace overwhelms judgment.
SPEAKER_00: Mercy interrupts destiny.
SPEAKER_00: And John walks out of that house a different man.
SPEAKER_00: Not because he earned it, not because he deserved it, but because grace claimed him.
SPEAKER_00: That moment, that moment is one of the closest literary images we have to understanding what baptism actually does.
SPEAKER_00: Today the church celebrates the baptism of the Lord, the final feast of the Christmas season.
SPEAKER_00: And while we often ask, why was Jesus baptized in the first place?
SPEAKER_00: Why did he need baptism?
SPEAKER_00: It's an important, rich, necessary question.
SPEAKER_00: But the more urgent question for us today is this.
SPEAKER_00: Do we know what happened to us when we were baptized?
SPEAKER_00: Because if we truly understand or truly understood, we would never live the same way again.
SPEAKER_00: Baptism is not a religious rite of passage.
SPEAKER_00: It's not some family tradition that we do.
SPEAKER_00: Baptism is an ontological rupture, a decisive break with the old creation and birth to a new one.
SPEAKER_00: The church calls baptism vitale spiritualis yanu.
SPEAKER_00: The door, the door to spiritual life.
SPEAKER_00: It's not one sacrament among many, it is the sacrament that changes what you are.
SPEAKER_00: I always remind parents on the day when they're baptizing their children, this today, on this baptism, is the most important day of this child's life.
SPEAKER_00: Which brings us to a deceptively simple question.
SPEAKER_00: What does it mean to be Christian?
SPEAKER_00: Being a Christian does not mean being polite, does not mean being moral, does not mean well-intentioned.
SPEAKER_00: Those things matter, don't get me wrong, but they're not uniquely Christian.
SPEAKER_00: People of good will, believers, agnostics, even atheists can live generous ethical lives.
SPEAKER_00: To be Christian is something far more radical.
SPEAKER_00: To be a Christian is to be grafted on to Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is the Son of God by nature.
SPEAKER_00: He shares the Father's life eternally.
SPEAKER_00: He is holy, sinless, and dwelling, it's the dwelling place of the Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: And through baptism, something staggering happens.
SPEAKER_00: You are inserted into his relationship with the Father.
SPEAKER_00: And the church teaches without hesitation that in baptism, every sin is destroyed.
SPEAKER_00: You are incorporated into the body of Christ not as a member of an organization, but as a living cell inside the body.
SPEAKER_00: The Holy Spirit takes up residence in you.
SPEAKER_00: You are adopted as a son or a daughter of the Father, and you become a co-heir with Christ to eternal life.
SPEAKER_00: Now listen carefully, Jesus is son by nature.
SPEAKER_00: We become son or daughter by adoption.
SPEAKER_00: And adoption is not second-class sonship, it is full inheritance.
SPEAKER_00: That's why Jesus then dares to say, Come, let us together pray to our Father, our Father.
unknown: St.
SPEAKER_00: Gregory of Nesene said it plainly, baptism is God's most beautiful and magnificent gift.
SPEAKER_00: It is called a gift because it is given to those who bring nothing of their own.
SPEAKER_00: It is a grace because it is given even to those who are guilty.
SPEAKER_00: That's Jean Valjean at the bishop's door.
SPEAKER_00: That's every one of us at the baptismal font.
SPEAKER_00: And here's a part that should unsettle us.
SPEAKER_00: Jean Valjean was not changed because he escaped punishment.
SPEAKER_00: He was not changed because he walked away with silver.
SPEAKER_00: He was changed because mercy demanded a response.
SPEAKER_00: Baptism is not magic.
SPEAKER_00: Grace is not passive.
SPEAKER_00: Adoption carries obligation.
SPEAKER_00: If baptism has grafted us into Christ, then his life must begin to appear in us.
SPEAKER_00: How we love, how we forgive, how we live, that's the Christian way.
SPEAKER_00: At the Jordan, the Father speaks, he says, You are my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased.
SPEAKER_00: Those words were spoken over you at your baptism.
SPEAKER_00: And if that's true, then mediocrity is no longer an option.
SPEAKER_00: Then sin is no longer compatible with your identity.
SPEAKER_00: Then faith cannot remain private, dormant, or occasional.
SPEAKER_00: Baptism does not simply forgive the past, it claims the future.
SPEAKER_00: It calls you to holiness, it calls you to mission, it calls you to die to the old self and again and again begin new.
SPEAKER_00: The tragedy is not that many Catholics struggle.
SPEAKER_00: The tragedy is that many Catholics forget who they are and who they belong to.
SPEAKER_00: They live as though baptism changed nothing.
SPEAKER_00: But today, standing at the Jordan, the church says, Remember, I need you to remember.
SPEAKER_00: Remember the grace you did not earn.
SPEAKER_00: Remember the identity you did not choose, remember the inheritance you did not deserve, and then live accordingly.
SPEAKER_00: Because when grace is truly received, lives change.
SPEAKER_00: Jean Valjean never went back to being who he was.
SPEAKER_00: Not because his past disappeared, but because it no longer defined him.
SPEAKER_00: Mercy did not erase his history, it reclaimed it.
SPEAKER_00: Grace did not deny his sin, it stripped it of its power.
SPEAKER_00: And can't you see what that means for all of us?
SPEAKER_00: We are not our sins.
SPEAKER_00: We are not our mistakes, we are not our failures, we are not the names the enemy tries to convince us that we are.
SPEAKER_00: Baptism declares something stronger.
SPEAKER_00: Our identity is no longer written by our past, but by God's mercy.
SPEAKER_00: Jean left the bishop's house carrying silver, but more importantly, he left carrying a new self.
SPEAKER_00: We leave the baptismal font carrying something infinitely greater, the very life of Christ within us.
SPEAKER_00: To be a Christian is to understand this.
SPEAKER_00: To proclaim I belong to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Have you noticed lately how football players and coaches are all proclaiming their love for Jesus?
SPEAKER_00: Have you seen this?
SPEAKER_00: This is what I'm talking about.
SPEAKER_00: They're declaring a truth.
SPEAKER_00: I am Christian.
SPEAKER_00: I belong to Him.
SPEAKER_00: I was grafted onto the body of Christ when I became a Christian at baptism.
SPEAKER_00: That sets us apart.
SPEAKER_00: So the question this feast leaves us with is not whether baptism worked.
SPEAKER_00: The question is whether we are living as if it matters.
SPEAKER_00: Because no one who truly encounters mercy remains unchanged.
SPEAKER_00: No one adopted by the Father keeps living as an orphan.
SPEAKER_00: No one grafted onto Christ can live small, guarded, half-hearted lives.
SPEAKER_00: Jean Valjean never returned to his former life because grace made that return impossible.
SPEAKER_00: Baptism has done the same thing for you.
SPEAKER_00: And so, my brothers and sisters, how will you proclaim to the world that you belong to Christ?
SPEAKER_00: How will you live?
SPEAKER_00: The choice is yours.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.