Video Transcript

Edmund: So maybe you’ve been baptized or maybe you’ve been to a baptism and you were probably a baby. So maybe no one talked to you really about the effects of baptism. But there are two effects of baptism that made me think of two things. Scuba diving and mermaids. I’m out of breath.

So when you think about scuba, I can’t breathe underwater. And I don’t know if you can, if you can, actually, you should call somebody, but if you, most people naturally can’t breathe underwater. But scuba gear gives us, especially if we have this oxygen tank and we can breathe, gives us this supernatural ability to go much deeper underwater for much longer periods of time. In the same way baptism gives us sanctifying grace, it gives us supernatural powers in a way. It gives us this supernatural ability because we’re able to participate in the nature of God. You can say that we are given the supernatural grace that otherwise we can’t participate in unless we are baptized.

Okay? So this might be kind of weird, but this is why baptism reminds me of Ariel. You know, the, the Disney classic, the Little Mermaid. So Ariel is a mermaid, and she’s in the, she’s in the the water world. You know, here she is in the water and she wants to be part of your world. She wants to be part of the world of humans and, and she can’t. She’s this type of creature and she wants to be part of this type of creature’s world. And in the show, Ariel, she’s given the ability to become this new creature. And because of that, she can be part of your world. And she’s transformed. And the Catechism says that baptism literally makes us a new creature, but also it comes with all these different relationships and this different family that she becomes a part of. And baptism’s the same way. We have a different relationship with God after baptism. So the Catechism tells us in paragraph 1265, “Baptism not only purifies from all sins, but also makes the neophyte a new creature, an adopted son of God who has become a partaker of the divine nature, a member of Christ, and a co-heir with him and a temple of the Holy Spirit.”

So hopefully when you think of baptism, you think about these two things, scuba and a little mermaid, and it’ll help you remember the two effects of baptism. Baptism purifies us of sin, but it also gives us these two effects. We become new creatures and we participate in the divine nature of God. God gives us birth into new life through the sacrament of baptism.