Several months ago, a nurse called me from the Westerly Hospital. She said that a woman from the parish had just requested that I come to visit her mother, who was in ICU and very close to death.

I said, "Sure. I’ll be right there."

However, as I was driving to the hospital, it suddenly occurred to me that the woman who had made this request was a convert to the Catholic faith. I said to myself, "If she wasn’t born a Catholic, then in all likelihood her mother isn’t Catholic. I wonder why they called me?"

I was soon to find out why the Lord wanted me there.

When I arrived at ICU, I met the woman in the hallway and she confirmed my initial suspicion. She said, "Fr. Ray, thank you for coming, but I’m not sure what you can do since my mother isn’t Catholic." She then added a comment which surprised me and filled me with joy simultaneously. She said, "In fact, my mom was never even baptized, although she attended a Baptist church for many years."

My immediate response was, "Do you think she would want to be baptized?"

The daughter said, "I think she might. She’s conscious, so you can ask her yourself."

So I did, and I’m happy to say the woman answered in the affirmative. So I baptized her right there—in her hospital bed—and she passed away a few days later.

Someone once made the statement, "To be baptized on one’s deathbed is a great grace—a last minute rescue!"

Truer words were never spoken.

You see, what took place in that hospital room all those months ago was not simply a pious, ancient ritual: it was an experience of the grace of salvation!

All of us who have been baptized have received this very same grace. It came to us as a free, unmerited gift from our loving God. But, let’s face it, it’s very easy for us to take it for granted. And this, I would say, is one of the biggest reasons why many Christians live mediocre lives. They don’t appreciate the gift they’ve been given in the sacrament of baptism, consequently they don’t treasure it by living holy lives. More about that in a few minutes.

The grace we receive in baptism—sanctifying grace—is the grace that gets us into heaven. It’s the grace Jesus Christ won for us by his passion, death and resurrection. That obviously means it’s extremely important! In fact, it’s not just important, it’s essential—it’s absolutely necessary. Sanctifying grace: don’t leave earth without it!

In John 3: 5, Jesus says to Nicodemus and to us: "Amen, amen, I say to you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit." In chapter 3 of his first letter St. Peter explicitly says that we are saved by baptism. In Titus 3 St. Paul writes, "But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us; not because of any righteous deeds we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the baptism of new birth and renewal by the Holy Spirit."

Baptism removes original sin and all personal sin; it makes you (as the Catechism says) "’a new creature,’ an adopted son of God, who has become a ‘partaker of the divine nature,’ member of Christ and co-heir with him, and a temple of the Holy Spirit." It makes you a member of the Body of Christ, it removes all temporal punishment due to sin, and imprints an indelible mark on your soul.

Did all this happen in that hospital room to that elderly woman who was critically ill? Yes! That’s why it was such a monumental event!

The reason I bring this up today is first of all to distinguish this baptism we receive as Christians from the baptism Jesus experienced in this Gospel story from Matthew 3. What Jesus received was the baptism of John, not Christian baptism. We need to be clear about that. The baptism of John was a sign of personal repentance; it did not bring the grace of salvation to people in the same sense that Christian baptism does. Jesus, of course, didn’t need John’s baptism, since he didn’t need to repent of any sins! John the Baptist knew that, which is why he protested when Jesus came forward.

So why did the Lord receive it anyway?

I think it was to show us how serious he was about identifying himself with sinful humanity! In a certain sense, it was a prefigurement of Good Friday. Jesus was willing to look like a sinner at the Jordan, even though he wasn’t; just as he would be willing 3 years later to look like a sinner on the cross—although he wasn’t—as he died for our sins!

For Jesus, receiving the baptism of John was an act of profound humility. For us, receiving Christian baptism is an act of necessity.

But receiving the gift of sanctifying grace in baptism, while necessary, is not sufficient.

We must also treasure the gift, by living the moral life the Church calls us to live—and that’s the difficult part.

I think one reason why some Christians fail to treasure the gift is that they don’t really appreciate it. They take it for granted, probably because baptisms happen so frequently and seem so "ordinary" to us.

The cure for this problem is for us to remember why we have the gift in the first place: it’s because Jesus Christ shed his precious blood for us on Mount Calvary 2,000 years ago. Remembering this truth will increase our appreciation for the gift.

I’ll give you a timely analogy to illustrate what I mean: Think of the firemen who died in the World Trade Center on September 11, but who guided many people to safety before they were killed. If those firefighters could be heard right now, they might say to the survivors, "Look—we shed our blood to give you the gift of more days and years of earthly life. Make sure you don’t squander this precious gift which we died to give you."

Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior could say the same thing to us concerning the eternal life—the sanctifying grace—we received in baptism: "I died on Good Friday to give you this gift; don’t squander it. And if you have squandered it by committing a mortal sin, get it back as soon as possible by making a good Confession!"

John Jonas, one of the firefighters of Ladder Company 6 who survived the collapse of the World Trade Center, was asked the question, "Do you believe there’s a purpose for your [remaining alive]?"

He answered by saying that he wasn’t sure, but then he added, "We just have to make the most of this gift."

That should be our attitude—and the attitude of every Christian—concerning the gift of baptismal grace! And let’s remember: the gift Jonas received on September 11 (as good as it is) will extend his earthly existence by several decades at best, but the gift we received in baptism has the potential to bring us eternal life. Thus we should treasure it even more.

Receiving the gift, appreciating it and treasuring it brings eternal life. Praise God! But it also brings many temporal benefits. That’s an added bonus!

This came home to me a couple of weeks ago, when I was visited by a woman who is currently thinking of joining the Jehovah’s Witnesses. She came to see me with her husband, who is a baptized Catholic. I had no trouble whatsoever addressing the woman’s biblical and doctrinal questions, but there was one problem she brought up for which I had no rebuttal: her husband’s poor example of faith. She said that one of the reasons she’s so attracted to the Jehovah’s witnesses is that they seem to be morally righteous people: they don’t use foul language, they take their religion seriously, and their family life is a priority for them. And at least twice during the conversation she turned to her husband and said, "But what about you? You don’t follow the commandments; your work is at the center of your life, not your religion—you don’t even go to church every Sunday. If you were living the way you should be living I wouldn’t have been attracted to the Jehovah’s Witnesses in the first place!"

I had no answer for that one, and neither did he, except to say, "I know. You’re right."

Here’s a man who has not appreciated or treasured his baptismal grace, and it’s not only put his own salvation in jeopardy—it’s also had (and is having!) a devastating effect on his marriage and family.

I pray that he will change, so that the Lord might bless him here—and in eternity.