Vatican City, Jan 13, 2008 / 15:40 pm
Pope Benedict XVI marked the end of the Christmas celebration today with the feast of the Lord’s Baptism. Speaking to pilgrims who gathered beneath the windows of his study to pray the midday Angelus, he urged all to give thanks that the Son of God came down to earth to share our human condition. It is through his death that we have all be baptized into eternal life.
The Feast of the Lord’s Baptism in the Jordan is traditionally the day when the Holy Father administers the sacrament of Baptism to new born babies, welcoming them into the Christian community. It is a tradition that Pope Benedict described as one of his favorites.
Sunday morning, Pope Benedict XVI told the parents and godparents of thirteen babies gathered beneath the magnificent frescoes of the Sistine Chapel that the entire mystery of Christ in the world can be summarized with the word “baptism”, which in Greek means “immersion.”
In baptism, the Holy Father said that the tiny human beings receive a new life, a life of grace that renders them capable of entering into a personal relationship with the Creator, forever, for all eternity. Unfortunately man is capable of extinguishing this new life through our sin, reducing it to a situation that Sacred Scripture calls a “second death.”