Pope John Paul II once said that what was important about him as not the fact that he was the pope. What was more important was the fact that he was baptized.

Inge Kraus

Inge Kraus doesn’t know who she really is; she only know that people call her by that name. She was just four years old in April, 1945, when Russian troops attacked Konigsber, the capital of what was the East Prussia. Inge remembers a strong man lifting her onto a wagon filled with people as Soviet artillery rained down upon the city she knew as home. She survived but was separated from her family and placed in an orphanage in Germany. Inge recently attended a gathering of war exiles from her city, tearfully hoping that someone might recognize her-but to no avail.

Sometimes it is difficult to figure out who we are. If you had to answer the question: Who are you?, what answer would you give? Most of us would say things like, I’m a mechanic, or I’m a Canadian or American, or I’m a mother or a wife, or a mechanic or a factory worker, or I’m the youngest in my family and so on. And yet, at the end of all of our descriptions, we would still not have reached the deepest truth of who we are. After all, many people are husbands or wives, or factory workers or business people. Those roles don’t get to the bottom of the question about who we are. It is really our Baptism that give us the most complete answer to that question.

The Defining Sacrament

It is through our Baptism that we come to know who we are and who we are to become. Baptism is the Sacrament that actually defines who we are. Please remember this fact: we were not only baptized many years ago...we are baptized at this very moment. Baptism is about the present, not about the past. When we talk about ourselves we don’t say: I was a man or a woman. We say, I am a man or a woman. Whenever we describe ourselves we are talking in the present tense. It is the present and the future we are talking about when we talk about who we are.

Baptism gives us our most basic identity. Through Baptism we affirm that we are sons and daughters of a loving God and brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ. We also become a dwelling place for the Holy Spirit. This is who we really are. Throughout the rest of our lives, we live in such a way that this basic identity becomes stronger and stronger. If we are faithful to our Baptism, then everything we do grows out of the fact that we are baptized people.

That’s why we hear these words from the opening prayer: “Keep us, your children born of water and the Spirit, faithful to our calling.”

A Calling Within A Calling

But don’t we all have other identities besides our basic identity as a Baptized person? After all, we do have to live out our lives in very specific ways. Some as single people. Others as husbands and wives; some as teachers, others as farmers or medical workers, and so on. There are thousands of different ways in which we are asked to live out our lives. How do these identities fit in with our basic identity?

This is where we have to learn how to live both as a son or daughter of God, and also as one who is deeply immersed in the things of this world. Someone who spends his or her life in a laboratory doings research, must discover how that work can be done in a spirit of love and concern. And the same thing can be said of any other way in which a person is asked to live out his or her life.

Our life’s work must be done within the framework of our Baptism. It is like painting a smaller circle within a larger circle. The larger circle encloses the smaller circle and in a certain way, protects and defines that smaller circle. So our Baptism envelopes our life in the world, and gives it shape and focus.

Myself

Here are a few lines from a poem called Myself. They are simple words but contain a very important viewpoint.

Reflection Questions

At his baptism, Jesus “went public”. His private life ended. He became a public witness to God and his ways. How public are we about our faith in Christ? Or is our Catholicism one of our best kept secrets.