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The Church does not dispense the sacrament of baptism in order to acquire for herself an increase in membership but in order to consecrate a human being to God and to communicate to that person the divine gift of birth from God.Unknown
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Accept the past as the past and realize that each new day you are a new person who doesn’t need to carry old baggage into the new day with you. It’s amazing how many people ruin the beauty of today with the sorrows of yesterday. Yesterday doesn’t exist anymore! For example, if ever I feel foolish or guilty about something I’ve done, I learn from it and attempt to do better the next time. Shame or guilt serves no one. Such feelings actually keep us down, often lowering the vibrations of those around us, as well. Living in the present moment is the recurring baptism of the soul, forever purifying every new day with a new you.Alaric Hutchinson
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I take thee at thy word: Call me but love, and I'll be new baptized; Henceforth I never will be Romeo.William Shakespeare
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It would be unjust toward children to introduce them to Christian teaching and existence only as little pagans and catechumens, in order to leave it up to them to choose the Faith on their own responsibility at a point in time difficult to determine.Unknown
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The grace of being is gift of baptism by washing in water. And in Spirit of Christ Jesus.Lailah Gifty Akita
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I breathe in. The water will wash my wounds clean. I breathe out. My mother submerged me in water when I was a baby, to give me to God. It has been a long time since I thought about God, but I think about him now. It is only natural. I am glad, suddenly, that I shot Eric in the foot instead of the head.Veronica Roth
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Teach the people the Word before converting and baptizing themSunday Adelaja
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Under the leadership of religious professionals, modern worship has become passive–listening to a message and singing some songs. Seldom is there a call to service or an invitation to trust Christ. Baptisms take place inside the church where it is safe and comfortable rather than in public where there is opportunity to give witness to the saving grace of Christ. The great needs of society are left to para-church groups, government agencies, and other social service organizations. All the while the church is losing its muscle tone, its biceps are becoming loose and flabby and its belly is becoming round and soft. Not a pretty picture for one who once was toned and buff–a lean, mean fighting machine.Craig Olson
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Simple, powerful, poignant, the Sign of the Cross is a mnemonic device like the Mass, in which we sit down to table with one another and remember the Last Supper, or a baptism, where we remember John the Baptist's brawny arm pouring some of the Jordan River over Christ. So we remember the central miracle and paradox of the faith that binds us each to each: that we believe, against all evidence and sense, in life and love and light, in the victory of those things over death and evil and darkness.Brian Doyle
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Be baptize with the Holy Spirit.Lailah Gifty Akita
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Then Peter said to them, "Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the Name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall recieve the gift of the Holy Spirit." ACTS 2: 38Lailah Gifty Akita
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We are members of God’s family. One faith, one hope and one baptism.Lailah Gifty Akita
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One Lord, one faith and one baptism.Lailah Gifty Akita
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I called it a baptism in flaming ink that forced me to shed my shyness about recognizing myself as a poet and to accept the fact that life had never given me any choice in the matter. And then I had to discover exactly what that meant.Aberjhani
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Prominent Christians in Constantine's time waited to be baptized until their deathbeds lest they commit a "major"sin that couldn't be forgiven of those already baptized. Others felt anyone who did anything to avoid martyrdom were apostates had no valid subsequent ministry.Thomas F. Madden
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We have seen some gatekeeping or fencing-the-table language already beginning to rear its head in this context. One needed to be baptized to take the meal; one needed to repent to take the meal; one needed a bishop or his subordinate to serve the meal. This was to become especially problematic when the church began to suggest that grace was primarily, if not exclusively, available through the hands of the priest and by means of the sacrament. One wonders what Jesus, dining with sinners and tax collectors and then eating his modified Passover meal with disciples whom he knew were going to deny, desert, and betray him, would say about all this. There needs to be a balance between proper teaching so the sacrament is partaken of in a worthy manner and overly zealous policing of the table or clerical control of it.Ben Witherington III
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The earthly form of Christ is the form that died on the cross. The image of God is the image of Christ crucified. It is to this image that the life of the disciples must be conformed; in other words, they must be conformed to his death (Phil 3.10, Rom 6.4) The Christian life is a life of crucifixion (Gal 2.19) In baptism the form of Christ's death is impressed upon his own. They are dead to the flesh and to sin, they are dead to the world, and the world is dead to them (Gal 6.14). Anybody living in the strength of Christ's baptism lives in the strength of Christ's death.Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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Baptism in the Holy Spirit belongs to them that believe and are not of this worldSunday Adelaja
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Tragically, some people believe they are going to heaven when they die just because a few drops of water were sprinkled over their heads a few weeks after their birth. They have no personal faith, have never made a personal decision, and are banking on a hollow ceremony to save them. How absurd.Max Lucado
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Tragically, some people believe they are going to heaven when they die just because a few drops of water were sprinkled over their heads a few weeks after their birth. They have no personal faith, have never made a personal decision, and are banking on a hollow ceremony to save them. How absurd!Max Lucado
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When the convert emerges from the water, the world seems changed. The world has not changed, it is always wonderful and horrible, iniquitous and filled with beauty. But now, after baptism, the eyes that see the world have changed.Liturgy Training Publications
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Baptism is one of those more effective rites that come in with the new covenant. The fact that baptism takes the place of the multiple, complicated cleansing rites of stoicheic order is itself a sign that salvation has come to the world. And the fact that baptism does the miraculous work of binding diverse flesh into one body means that baptism is one of the rites that effects the social salvation of humanity.Peter Leithart
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There has been a rediscovery of the meaning of baptism as entrance and integration into the Church, of "ecclesiological" significance. But ecclesiology, unless it is given its true cosmic perspective ("for the life of the world"), unless it is understood as the christian form of "cosmology, " is always ecclesiolatry, the Church considered as a "being in itself" and not the new relation of god, man and the world.Alexander Schmemann
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Dost thou renounce Satan, and all his Angels, and all his works, and all his services, and all his pride?" ..The first act of the Christian life is a renunciation, a challenge. No one can be Christ's until he has, first, faced evil, and then become ready to fight it. How far is this spirit from the way in which we often proclaim, or to use a more modern term, "sell" Christianity today! .. How could we then speak of "fight" when the very set-up of our churches must, by definition, convey the idea of softness, comfort, peace? .. One does not see very well where and how "fight" would fit into the weekly bulletin of a suburban parish, among all kings of counseling sessions, bake sales, and "young adult" get-togethers.."Dost thou unite thyself unto Christ? .Alexander Schmemann
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How do you know yourself to be a son of God in fact as well as in name?” Answer: “Because I am baptized in the name of God the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” - John Calvin (from his catechism)John Calvin
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It is because baptism is a real insertion of human beings into the ascended manhood of Christ that the Church is Christ's own body, flesh of his flesh and bone of his bones.E.L. Mascall
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Thus the vocation of the baptized person is a simple thing: it is to live from day to day, whatever the day brings, in this extraordinary unity, in this reconciliation with all people and all things, in this knowledge that death has no more power, in this truth of the resurrection. It does not really matter exactly what a Christian does from day to day. What matters is that whatever one does is done in honor of one’s own life, given to one by God and restored to one in Christ, and in honor of the life into which all humans and all things are called. The only thing that really matters to live in Christ instead of death.William Stringfellow
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We lost track of which was which, but we were fairly sure that some of the creatures had been borne away still in the darkness of paganism, and that worried us a good deal.Marilynne Robinson
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You know it’s a real salvation when Baptists use cold water.Jared Brock
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Bishop Hostettler explained that baptism was not the means by which one is saved, but simply an outward sign of salvation. Just as an Amishman’s beard is an indication of his marriage and commitment to his wife, so baptism symbolizes our covenant with Christ.J.E.B. Spredemann