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The Transformative Power of Baptism Baptism is the sacrament in which believers are “reborn as sons of God” (CCC 1213) by “water and Spirit” (John 3:5). It incorporates us into the Mystical Body of Christ (1 Cor. 12:13) and makes us sharers in the mission of the Church (CCC 1213). “Just as the gestation of our first birth took place in water,” the Catechism adds, “so the water of baptism truly signifies that our birth into the divine life is given to us in the Holy Spirit” (694). This divin …

Sacraments of Grace and Strength In the weeks leading up to my reception into the Catholic Church, I prepared to not only to be baptized, but also to be confirmed. The sacrament of baptism uses water to communicate grace that takes away sin, while the sacrament of confirmation uses hands that spread oil across the forehead. This oil seals the person with the gifts of the Holy Spirit to help him live out the Catholic faith. Hebrews 6:2 alludes to this sacrament when it says how, …

The vast majority of Christians believe that baptism is a means of salvation—Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Lutherans, Anglicans, Methodists, and even some Calvinists. Only Baptists and those springing from the radical side of the Reformation reject this.On the part of Catholics, the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that baptism is “necessary for salvation” because “God has bound salvation to the sacrament” and that the Church “does not know of any means other than bapti …

St. Justin Martyr’s First Apology dates to around 160. In the text we find Justin offering an explanation and a defense to the pagan emperor. That includes a description of what the Christians of his day thought about baptism:I will also relate the manner in which we dedicated ourselves to God when we had been made new through Christ; lest, if we omit this, we seem to be unfair in the explanation we are making. As many as are persuaded and believe that what we teach and say is true, and undertak …

God is eternal: he is outside of time, he has no beginning and no end. As described in the very beginning of the Bible, he created the universe and everything in it by his word, by willing it all to be. But creation does not just exist as a neutral construct. Because it is conceived, created, and kept in existence by God, it is good in itself; the very existence of God’s creation glorifies him. This is seen in the cry of the Seraphim heard by the prophet Isaiah: “Holy, holy, holy, the Lor …