Bishop Anthony B. Taylor delivered this homily on Easter March 31.
Every sacrament is a privileged moment of encounter with God and we celebrate today the sacraments of baptism, confirmation and Eucharist.
Baptism is our most important sacrament because we have to be baptized to receive the others. We have to die with Christ, be buried with him in the waters of baptism and then be reborn from the womb of that font in order to share in his victory over sin and death.
This baptismal certificate, which I am holding up for you to see, it is the most important document I possess and the same is true for you — whether you realize it or not!
More important than any diploma or certificate of professional accreditation hanging in your office. More important than your birth certificate or naturalization papers. More important than your discharge papers from military service or even your purple heart. It is more important than your marriage license or the apostolic letter naming me your bishop.
The reason is that your baptismal certificate is your passport to eternal life. It documents your adoption into the family of God. It verifies that you are a member of the body of Christ and that through him you enjoy full communion with the entire blessed Trinity in whose threefold name you were baptized.
Your baptismal certificate documents your status as a naturalized citizen of the Kingdom of God — an allegiance that for the baptized must take precedence over allegiance to any human government or institution. You have renounced Satan, all his works and all his empty promises, and now in the creed we recite every Sunday at Mass you pledge your allegiance to God instead, his kingdom and his Church.
Since your baptismal certificate is the most important document you will ever possess, how about framing it like I have and giving it pride of place on your wall as a constant reminder to yourself and to others of where your first allegiance lies?
Our Pledge of Allegiance has got the wording right — we are “one nation under God” — even though most people in our ever-more-secular society seem to have forgotten that.
Easter is our Christian Fourth of July, our true Independence Day: the day we were set free from the power of evil, the day when a path to citizenship in the Kingdom of God was opened to us. But so long as we remain on this earth, we do so as dual citizens yet “no one can serve two masters.”
And when the demands of the two come into conflict — as they often do — it is then that we reveal where our true loyalty lies.
The reason national flags are not supposed to be allowed inside Catholic churches except on special days of prayer for the nation is that Jesus did not found a national Church. He founded a universal Church, which after all is what the word “catholic” means: universal.
We love our country and pray for our country — and for every country — but our first allegiance is to the Kingdom of God, already present but not yet fully manifest in our world. The “flag” which does hang in every Catholic church is the cross of Jesus Christ, whose victory we celebrate today.
The readings you have just heard show how events in the Old Testament prefigure many of the most important truths of our salvation which I think you know are summarized in the Catechism.
God’s creation of the world prefigures his new creation in Christ. Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his only son Isaac prefigures God’s sacrifice of his only begotten Son for our salvation. God’s defeat of Pharaoh and liberation of the Hebrew slaves prefigures Jesus’ defeat of Satan and his liberation of all who were enslaved to sin and death.
What the prophets Isaiah, Baruch and Ezekiel proclaim, Jesus fulfills, all of which prepare us to understand the meaning of the empty tomb discovered by the women in our Gospel reading.
The early Church reflected on these and other truths revealed by God, eventually producing in the creed a summary which serves also as our pledge of allegiance to the Kingdom of God — so to speak — which we will joyfully proclaim today when the time comes for us to renew our own baptismal promises in the presence of the newest citizens of our true and lasting homeland, the kingdom of God.
