Baptism is our first meeting with grace. For some people baptism has become all about dressing the baby and choosing godparents and organizing a caterer. But none of this has anything to do with the intense and sometimes perilous journey that baptism begins, plunging us into a world of temptations, where we are easily surrounded, invaded, wooed. It’s all gotten lost in the details, so that some Christians, in their own profound journeys, no longer realize that every journey is part of our baptism. In baptism God begins this extraordinary conversation with us: a conversation in which he comforts, invites us to a lifestyle, warns of the dangers, and assures us of his presence. Baptism was never meant to be a once and for all event, but something we live and renew every day. It teaches us who we are. So that we can be confident that no matter how often we fall short or fail, nothing that we do, or fail to do, can remove the identity that God gives us, beloved son, beloved daughter. Our relationship with God is the one relationship in life we can’t mess up precisely because we did not establish it. We can neglect this relationship, we can deny it, run away from it, ignore it, but we can’t mess it up, for God loves us far too deeply and completely ever to let us go. No matter how many relationships are fragile or tattered, this primary relationship remains solid and intact no matter what. We have a beloved and well-pleasing relationship with God. God shines on us and splashes us with a name – not the name our parents choose, but one he chooses for us – beloved daughter, beloved son, as we emerge wet from the font. But with that comes the responsibility to live out of that relationship. Baptisms take place on a Saturday morning, by prearrangement with the parish priest.