Living the Graces of Baptism

Church of Jesus Christ of the Universe

By Mauro

14.01.2026

This week we are reflecting on what our Baptism is, and what it means to live the graces of Baptism.

So, we have said and we know that in Baptism Jesus renews the covenant in His Blood and, through this renewal, enables us once again to renew the covenant with the Father, to encounter the Father, the covenant broken by original sin. So, the first thing we can say is that Baptism is the beginning of a journey and that this renewal of the covenant is the beginning of a journey. It is a journey that Jesus makes with us, or rather, that Jesus makes within us, because this renewal takes place through a journey that requires us to say ‘yes’: yes to God, yes to God’s will, yes to God’s love, yes to His forgiveness. So, Jesus and the Holy Spirit – who is the first gift that Jesus gave us – lead us back to the Father; they lead us back through these ‘yes’, through this assent which we ought to give in every situation of life, we are called upon to utter this ‘yes’, for which we also have the grace, for original sin had robbed us precisely of the ability to remain faithful; we had entered into darkness.

So, by receiving Baptism, we have the chance to say once more: “Yes, I want to meet the Father, I want the life of God.” We renew this covenant by continually choosing God; we renew this covenant by allowing all the good, all the beauty that God himself placed within us at the moment of conception to spring forth from within us. And through this reawakening of all that is within us – for in each of us there is beauty, there is the capacity, the image and likeness of God, and therefore the capacity to be children – it is on this journey that we return to being children, rising from the darkness into which we have fallen.

The foundation of this entire journey that drives it all forward, is indeed the grace of Jesus; yet the first step – perhaps the initial ‘yes’ which is ultimately constantly renewed – is to entrust our lives to Jesus, through the Immaculate Heart of Mary; we say ‘to offer our lives to Jesus through Mary’. But an offering in the sense of saying to Him: ‘Guide my life, help me to become what I once was, help me to live, to live truly’, not an offering in a pathological sense.

So, it is a sincere, free offering, an offering without any ulterior motives, an offering that becomes ever more total. It is, as I said, a journey, a path. It begins with this desire, a desire that grows, a desire that shows us how beautiful life in God is and draws us away from everything that is not life, which might have seemed beautiful to us. It is an offering that becomes, I repeat, total, which, through every ‘yes’ that we utter day by day, leads to letting the old self, the old way of thinking, die; letting to die all that is corrupt, all that passes away, all that is mingled with the spirit of the world and with the disintegrating energy and which, instead of bringing out the beautiful, always brings out selfishness, egocentrism, and all that, after all, we see on Earth.

To renew the covenant, to return to true life – for life is this journey, life is knowing the Father and the One whom the Father has sent[1] – this renewal of each of us has models, and they are Jesus and Mary Most Holy. Each of us must behave like Jesus; each of us must follow the Son to the very end, with our whole being, to return to being a child. There is no other way. Behaving like Jesus does not mean that we must start preaching or performing miracles but rather loving as He loved. Our guiding principle, the measure of our actions and of our following Him, must be His love – in our relationships with others, in everything we do, at work and within the family; we must always have this love, loving as Jesus loved. We must allow this love to always prevail, to overcome selfishness, to overcome our own thoughts, to overcome our way of acting, to overcome what we have learnt and what the world has taught us.

We must love the way Jesus lived; for that way of life is God’s Law – the Law that is written within each of us. Each of us carries this Law in our hearts, for each of us was born of love. To love His life, His life spent for others, to love His poverty of spirit, to love all the beatitudes He lived out. This must not remain merely theoretical; there must be a desire to live like this. To love always, to love the life we live, to love the beautiful situations and also the difficult ones, because by doing so we allow the Holy Spirit to bring our identity to the surface from within us. To live the offering freely, to allow Jesus to do with us as He wills, to allow Him to lead us where He wills, for it is futile to hide, and the offering is precisely to say to Him: “Do with me as You will.” The offering means, in the end, handing over our freedom to Him, even on this journey – not because we know we stand to lose something but precisely because we know that, in doing so, we gain everything.

It is a journey that begins with a desire, but which, on this path of knowing the Father and Jesus, leads us to desire only Him, surrendering everything, even our freedom. It will lead us all, like St Paul, to say: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.”[2] To the extent that we die, the Son is born within us; it is Christ living in us. It is the path of the “here I am”[3], of the Blessed Virgin Mary, but of everyone who says: “Here I am, I am the servant of the Lord.” It is the path of every Christian walking towards the new creation; we know that we will live forever, we know that eternal life awaits us, and we free ourselves from our old self, from the old way of thinking. It is the path of all the saints, of all the apostles; think of Saint Peter in that passage from the Gospel of John when he is told: “When you are old, you will go where you do not wish to go.”[4] We must all arrive there – the path of Saint Francis, who freed himself from everything in order to live. He is now called “Alter Christus”. It is the path of the Blessed Virgin Mary par excellence.

By living in this way, renewing this covenant with Jesus – yet remaining faithful to this covenant, for if we do not remain faithful to this covenant, it is another original sin – by striving to be upright, we shall attain the state of being immaculate, we shall attain communion, and we shall truly come to shine with the grace of God.

So, may the Blessed Virgin Mary continue to help and bless us, in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

 

[1] See Jn 17, 3

[2] See Galatians 2, 20

[3] See Lk 1, 38

[4] See Jn 21, 18