Baptism
Requirements
To have your child baptized, contact the Parish Secretary, Peg Brizendine, to schedule the baptism and sign up to learn more about the Church’s teachings regarding baptism.
Adults who wish to be baptized into the Christian faith enter the Catholic Church through the Order of Christian Initiation for Adults (OCIA). The OCIA is a process of spiritual growth and learning about Catholicism. Through the OCIA, you are invited to enter into a relationship with God and the Church. Those who go through the OCIA and wish to become Christians are baptized. Contact our Director of Religious Education or our OCIA Coordinator to join OCIA.
History & Theology
Baptism is the first sacrament of initiation into the Christian life. It is rooted in Christ’s baptism (Matthew 3:13–17; Mark 1:9–11; Luke 3:21–23) as well as his command to make disciples of all nations (Matthew 28:19). It existed in the early Church, where whole households (men, women, children, servants, etc) were baptized (Acts 10, Acts 16, and 1 Corinthians 1), and it was common practice by the late 2nd century.
The Catholic Church teaches that “Holy Baptism is the basis of the whole Christian life, the gateway to life in the Spirit, and the door which gives access to the other sacraments. Through Baptism we are freed from sin and reborn as sons of God; we become members of Christ, are incorporated into the Church and made sharers in her mission: Baptism is the sacrament of regeneration through water and in the word.” (Catechism of the Catholic Church #1213)
According to the Bible, “Christ also died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit; in which he went and preached to the spirits in prison, who formerly did not obey, when God’s patience waited in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were saved through water. Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a clear conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers subject to him.”
(I Peter 3:18-22)