Please read the above passage before reading the homily.
My sisters and brothers,
It is a scary thing to receive baptism. In baptism we die; in baptism enter go into death; in baptism we put an end to our old life. In baptism, we go into nothingness, into total darkness with only a promise of a new life. Receiving baptism is going on an adventure.
Think of a child who has a toy in hand. The child has to let go of the toy in order to receive a piece of candy. There is a moment when the child holds nothing, neither the toy nor the candy, a moment of nothingness. T is an adventure to reach out the hand to get something else.
Likewise with baptism. We have to let go of our old life to receive the new life. We know well our old life, and we do not know our new life. We let go of the old life because we have trust in the promise and the power of God that we shall receive with Christ the new life through the death and resurrection of Christ.
We believe that if we die with him, we shall also live with him.” If we die, we live; if we do not die, we do not live.
We have to be like the bread of Eucharist. So long as it remains bread and rejects change, it remains only bread. If, however, it gives up being bread, it can become the body of Christ. The bread has to enter the nothingness in order to rise in the new life of being the body of Christ. The bread has to die to being bread in order to rise and be the body of Christ. The same is true of the wine. The same is also true of us. We have to die in order to live with Christ and be in reality Christ himself.
All of us have received baptism and have begun this adventure. We cannot undo our baptism because through it God has made us, really and sacramentally, into his Son Jesus Christ. We cannot undo this. We are God’s children forever. We have to live as God’s children and become like God. This is an adventure, that we, humans as we are, can be God and live as God.
If the bread becomes Christ’s body and if the wine becomes the Blood of Christ, equally we can become the body of Christ through our baptism into his death and resurrection.
Wow! Let us live this adventure of the new life of baptism, without being scared!