The liturgy this Sunday includes the Renewal of Baptismal Promises. Saint Paul understands our baptism is a participation in Christ’s Paschal Mystery—his passion, death, and resurrection (and our own future resurrection)—the center of our Faith. “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life” (Rom 6:3-5; see also 1 Cor 15:13-14). During the Renewal of Baptismal Promises, we are asked to reject the person of Satan who desires through his works and his deceptions to unseat God’s place in our lives. And thus, we are asked to accept, profess, and renew our belief in God, in whose name we were baptized (cf Mt 28:19): in our Father who created us, in the Son who redeemed us, and in the Holy Spirit whose works sanctified us. Once a year, together as a Church we renew the promises we made during our baptism. Some of us were too young to make and remember those promises so, our parents helped us in everything, as was expected of them, including those matters of Faith. After all, no one is too young to be admitted into God’s universal family! For, even in the Old Testament, eight day-old babies were admitted into God’s covenant family (cf Gen 17:11-12). Saint John’s Epistle gives us another reason to celebrate and rejoice in our baptism: “Behold what manner of love the Father has given to us that we should be called children of God. And that is what we are!” (1 John 3:1)