Read an excerpt from a spiritual conference given by Archbishop Lefebvre on the importance of our baptism and why we should frequently meditate upon it.
The theme of the March-April issue of The Angelus magazine is: Baptism: Door of the Church.
Angelus Press blog has published an excerpt from this issue from a spiritual conference given by Archbishop Lefebvre to his seminarians at Econe.
Excerpts of Archbishop Lefebvre on remembering our baptism
The idea of the Church can scarcely be thought of without baptism coming immediately to mind. Baptism is a reality we ought to think about often. We were baptized, for the majority of us, as infants, newborns just a couple of days or a week or two old. We were not aware of what was happening; obviously, we did not realize what was going on. This is a serious matter. It was God’s will, that’s just the way things are, yet in all of that there is something we shouldn’t overlook: the forgetfulness of our baptism simply because we did not consciously participate in it.
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It’s a new life that is beginning. We become separated from others by the very fact because we become members of a family, indeed the very members of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the head of the Mystical Body which is the Church. We have to think about it often. During confirmations I like to remind the children that confirmation confirms the grace of baptism, and consequently they should know and understand what baptism is.
I find that there is something wonderful in the first words the Church puts on our lips through our godparents when we come to church for the first time. At our first contact with the Church, the priest asked: “Quid petis ad Ecclesia Dei—what do you ask of God’s Church?” What do you want? What have you come here for? And our godparents answered for us: “We ask for faith—Fidem.”
We need to think well on it. What the Church puts on our lips at the door of the Church the first time we enter a church is supremely important. She says: Ask for faith. Nothing else. A single word.
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We asked of the Church—and we ask every day of our life—for faith: Priests, give us the Faith. Bishops, give us the Faith. Pope, give us the Faith. You were the ones who told us to ask for it. Before we could speak, before we knew how to talk, that is the first thing you placed on our lips: Ask for faith. Give it to us, then, since you told us to ask you for it.
How earnestly, how carefully, ought we to ask of the Church, Faith, and we must refuse to let anyone diminish it, or cheat us out of it, or change it. In the very first moments of our existence, at our baptism, that’s what we were asking.
This is the essence of our fight.
