Day 170: Who Can Be Baptized? (2025) - The Catechism in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Summary of "Day 170: Who Can Be Baptized?" from The Catechism in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Podcast Information:

Title: The Catechism in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)
Host/Author: Ascension
Episode: Day 170: Who Can Be Baptized? (2025)
Release Date: June 19, 2025

Introduction

In Day 170 of The Catechism in a Year podcast, Fr. Mike Schmitz delves into the pivotal question, "Who can be baptized?" Drawing from paragraphs 1246 to 1252 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Fr. Mike explores the criteria and theological underpinnings of baptism, distinguishing between adult and infant baptism. This episode offers listeners a comprehensive understanding of the sacrament's accessibility and its significance within the Catholic faith.

Opening Prayer

Fr. Mike opens the episode with a heartfelt prayer, inviting listeners to center their hearts and minds on God's presence. He emphasizes gratitude for the gift of baptism and extends a plea for those who are not yet baptized to be guided towards this sacred sacrament.

"Father in heaven, we praise you... we ask that you please lead [listeners] closer and closer to this incredible gift that you have in store."
[00:05]

Overview of Catechism Paragraphs 1246-1252

Fr. Mike outlines the scope of today's discussion by reading and summarizing Catechism paragraphs 1246 to 1252. He highlights the Church's clear stance:

"Every person not yet baptized and only such a person is able to be baptized."
[00:05]

This succinctly answers the primary question of who is eligible for baptism, setting the foundation for further exploration of adult and infant baptism.

Adult Baptism and the Catechumenate

Fr. Mike discusses the tradition of adult baptism, particularly in contexts where Christianity is newly introduced or when individuals convert to the faith. He explains the role of the catechumenate, a period of preparation and formation for those seeking baptism.

Key Points:

Catechumenate Purpose:
The catechumenate aims to mature the faith of adults in response to God's initiative, fostering their integration into the ecclesial community.
Formation Aspects:
Catechumens are educated in the mysteries of salvation, evangelical virtues, and introduced to the liturgical and charitable life of the Church.
Community Integration:
Through sacred rites, catechumens become part of the Church's household, embodying faith, hope, and charity.

"The catechumenate is a formation in the whole Christian life, during which the disciples will be joined to Christ, their teacher."
[Timestamp Approximation: ~10:30]

Infant Baptism

Transitioning to infant baptism, Fr. Mike underscores its theological necessity and historical continuity within the Church. He explains that baptism removes original sin and incorporates the child into God's family, emphasizing the gratuitous nature of this sacrament.

Key Points:

Original Sin and Fallen Nature:
Infants, born with original sin, require baptism to be freed from darkness and to embrace the freedom of being children of God.
Gratuitous Grace:
Infant baptism exemplifies God's unmerited grace, as infants receive this gift without any prerequisite merit.
Historical Tradition:
The practice dates back to the second century, with early Christian writings and apostolic preaching supporting the inclusion of infants in baptismal households.

"The sheer gratuitousness of the grace of salvation is particularly manifest in infant baptism."
[Timestamp Approximation: ~25:45]

"From the beginning of the apostolic preaching, when whole households received baptism, infants may also have been baptized."
[Timestamp Approximation: ~30:10]

Continuous Formation in the Christian Life

Fr. Mike employs the analogy of a "training montage" from popular culture to illustrate the ongoing process of spiritual formation post-baptism. Whether through the pre-baptismal catechumenate or the post-baptismal formation, believers are continuously shaped in their Christian lives.

Key Points:

Lifelong Journey:
Baptism marks the beginning, but continual growth in faith, virtues, and participation in the Church's life is essential.
Personal Reflection:
Fr. Mike encourages listeners to assess their own spiritual formation, regardless of their stage in life, emphasizing that growth is always possible and desired by God.
Community Support:
Being part of the body of Christ means supporting each other through prayer and communal engagement.

"The catechumenate... is all about letting myself be formed, letting myself be trained in the spiritual life."
[Timestamp Approximation: ~35:20]

The Inclusive Nature of Baptism

A central theme of the episode is the universality of baptism. Fr. Mike reiterates that baptism is intended for all individuals, aligning with God's desire for everyone to be saved. This inclusivity underscores the Church's mission to evangelize and extend the grace of baptism to all corners of the world.

Key Points:

God's Desire for Salvation:
"Baptism is for everyone. God's grace of salvation, his grace of redemption... it's meant to be inclusive."
[Timestamp Approximation: ~40:05]
Mission of the Believers:
Baptized individuals are called to evangelize, sharing the transformative gift of baptism and fostering the growth of the Church.

Conclusion

Fr. Mike wraps up the episode by celebrating the sacrament of baptism and the ongoing journey of faith it entails. He emphasizes the importance of prayer, community, and continuous formation in living out one's baptismal promises.

"Please pray for me. I am praying for you. Truly, my name is Father Mike. I cannot wait to see you tomorrow. God bless."
[Timestamp Approximation: ~45:00]

Final Thoughts

Day 170 of The Catechism in a Year provides listeners with a thorough understanding of who can be baptized, the significance of both adult and infant baptism, and the essential role of ongoing spiritual formation within the Catholic faith. Fr. Mike Schmitz effectively communicates the inclusive and transformative nature of baptism, encouraging believers to embrace their faith journey with dedication and community support.

Note: Due to the nature of the provided transcript, specific timestamps beyond the initial [00:05] were approximated based on the flow of the discussion. For precise timestamps, please refer to the official podcast episode.

Transcript

A (0:05)

Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz, and you're listening to the Catechism in a Year podcast where we encounter God's plan of sheer goodness for us, revealed in scripture and passed down through the tradition of the Catholic faith. The Catechism in a Year is brought to you by ascension. In 365 days, we'll read through the Catechism of the Catholic Church, discovering our identity and God's family as we journey together to our heavenly home. This is day 170, you guys. We're chipping away. We're reading paragraph 1246 through 1252. As always, I am using the Ascension edition of the Catechism, which includes the Foundations of Faith approach, but you can follow along with any recent version of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. You can also download your own Catechism in a Year reading plan by visiting ascension press.com ciy and lastly, you can click follow up. Subscribe in your podcast app for daily updates, daily notifications, unless you're following in one of those. One of those, you know, apps, or one of those platforms that don't allow you to follow or subscribe. How cruel, how cruel to be denied every. To have to hear this every day and not be able to have the opportunity to click follow or subscribe. Here we go. Also, quick thank you for all those who have supported the production of this podcast with your prayers, with your financial gifts. We couldn't do this without you because it's day 170. Here we go. Today we're talking about who can receive baptism, and we're talking about two groups of people. One is baptism of adults, the other is baptism of infants. And so this is going to be kind of recognized, actually, the church is really clear. The one paragraph 1246, is only one sentence long, and I want to give it away right now. In answer to the question who can receive baptism? The answer the Church gives in paragraph 1246, every person not yet baptized and only such a person is able to be baptized. Right? So who can receive baptism? Someone unbaptized. There it is that. That is the really brief answer. But in that we have kind of two groups. One is adults, the other is infants. We're going to talk about both of those groups because one group, the adults, right? There's a catechumen, a formation of adults as they receive that gift of faith and receive that gift of bapt. And the other is baptism of infants, which goes back to the very beginnings of the church. We're going to talk about both of those things today. Before we do that, let us launch into the Father's heart by just calling upon our Lord Jesus and asking for the Holy Spirit to guide us today. Father in heaven, we praise you. We give you glory. And we thank you, thank you for the gift of baptism. If we have received baptism, we just praise you because this gift has come to us. A purely gratuitous gift, a purely gracious gift, a grace filled gift, an undeserved gift, an unearned gift, a gift that comes from your heart. We thank you. And for all of us who are listening who have not been baptized, we ask that you please lead us, step by step, closer and closer to this incredible gift that you have in store. You want everyone, you want everyone on this planet, everyone who has ever lived is living or will live. You want them to be brought into your family. And so we ask you, please, Lord God, for all those who are listening joining us today, walking with us, we ask that you please who are not baptized, we ask that you lead them by the power of your love and your truth to the fountain of baptism, so they can also become sons and daughters of you, Our Heavenly Father. We make this prayer in the mighty name of Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. It's day 170. We're reading paragraphs 1246 to 1252. Who can receive baptism? Every person not yet baptized, and only such a person is able to be baptized. The BAPTISM of ADULTS since the beginning of the Church, adult baptism is the common practice where the proclamation of the Gospel is still new. The catechumenate therefore occupies an important place. This initiation into Christian faith and life should dispose the catechumen to receive the gift of God in baptism, confirmation and the Eucharist. The catechumenate, or formation of catechumens, aims at bringing their conversion and faith to maturity in response to the divine initiative and in union with an ecclesial community. The catechumenate is to be a formation in the whole Christian life, during which the disciples will be joined to Christ, their teacher. The catechumens should be properly initiated into the mystery of salvation and the practice of the evangelical virtues, and they should be introduced into the life of faith, liturgy and charity of the people of God. By successive sacred rites, catechumens are already joined to the Church. They are already of the household of Christ, and are quite frequently already living a life of faith, hope and charity. With love and solicitude, Mother Church already embraces them as her own. The baptism of infants Born with a fallen human nature and tainted by original sin, children also have need of the new birth in baptism to be freed from the power of darkness and brought into the realm of the freedom of the children of God, to which all men are called. The sheer gratuitousness of the grace of salvation is particularly manifest in infant baptism. The Church and the parents would deny a child the priceless grace of becoming a child of God were they not to confer baptism shortly after birth. Christian parents will recognize that this practice also accords with their role as nurturers of the life that God has entrusted to them. The practice of infant baptism is an immemorial tradition of the Church. There is explicit testimony to this practice from the second century on. And it is quite possible that from the beginning of the apostolic preaching, when whole households receive baptism, infants may also have been baptized. Okay, there we have it. Day 170, paragraphs 1246 to 1252. Who can be baptized? Every person not baptized. So this is God's gratuitous grace, right? This is God's free grace. And this is one of the things that we have to keep in mind because we're going to talk about some more things like faith and baptism. What if someone hasn't been baptized? We're talking about all of those because in a day or two we're also going to be emphasizing the necessity of baptism. So who can be baptized is a really important question to ask and answer. Why? Because baptism is for everyone. Everyone. God's grace, God's grace of salvation, his grace of redemption. It's not exclusive. It's meant to be inclusive, right? Then this is so important for us, because here is God who reveals that he wants everyone, all men to be saved. So even those who do not know of Jesus Christ, God wants them to know of Him. And so this is really important. It's imperative on us to be able to say, okay, if that's the case, and not all human beings do know about God and had access to baptism, then what can I do? What is God calling me to do if I've been baptized? What is God calling me to do to spread that word and to bring that incredible free gift of new life of being run into the people of God, being a temple of the Holy Spirit, being adopted by the Father as His sons and daughters? What am I doing to bring that to the world? So keep that in mind. Every person not yet baptized can receive baptism, and God wants them to couple things 1247-1249, baptism of adults. Because since the beginning of the church, where the gospel is proclaimed new, where Christianity has not yet made inroads in the culture, adult baptism is the common practice, right? That makes sense because we have a lot of people who were raised not Christian. You have a lot of people who were raised without hearing the good news of Jesus Christ. Therefore, adult baptism is the common practice. So from the very beginning, well, you have adults who are hearing the word of God, you have adults who are hearing the good news of Jesus Christ. And so adults are the ones who primarily are being baptized. Makes sense. Because of that, there is that catechumenate, right, or the formation, the preparation, the proclamation of the word of God and that response of faith that is elicited during that. That time of the catechumen or that time of formation of the catechumens. I think this is. I'm going to use the word remarkable again. Dang it. I didn't mean to do that. But here it goes. It's remarkable because paragraph 1248 states that the catechumenate is to be a formation in the whole Christian life. Now, a lot of us who have been baptized as children, we had that post catechumenate, right? That post baptismal catechumenate. And that what that's meant to be, though, is a formation in the whole Christian life. We can ask ourselves the question, not to lay blame at anyone's feet, but to ask ourselves the question, have I received a formation in the whole Christian life? And again, this is not to leave blame at anyone. Oh, I can't believe it. My parents didn't do this, my parish didn't do this, my youth minister didn't do this. That's not the point. The point is to ask myself the question, have I had that formation in the whole Christian life? If I haven't, well then that means that God wants me to have that formation. Even if this is after baptism. God wants me to have that formation, but not just intellectual formation, not merely, you might say, like you know, prayer or spiritual formation. He wants us to have that whole formation in the whole Christian life. And so I asked that question and we can ask that question of ourselves again, as I said the third time or fourth time, not to lay blame at anyone's feet, but to kind of give ourselves a self assessment and say, okay, what more does God want for me? Well, he wants me to continue to be formed. That's it. Very simple. During which it goes on to say, during which the disciples will be joined to Christ their teacher. The catechumens should be properly initiated into the mystery of salvation. Do I know about the mystery of salvation? And the practice of the evangelical virtues? Have I been formed in growing in virtue? And they should be introduced into the life of faith, the liturgy and charity of the people of God. And so that's a part of all of your life and my life when it comes to formation. I am always such a huge fan of origin stories, right? When you watch movies, and not just origin stories, like, here's how Batman became Batman. I love that. That's awesome. Here's how Robin became Robin. These things are really cool. But even the, like, the training montage, you guys know what I'm talking about when it comes to, like, the Rocky movies. The Rocky movies are classic. They're known for the training montage. And the training montage is all wet. It's. Here's the character Rocky or whoever the is, right? And what they're going to do is they're training for the big thing, whatever that big event is. And so there's this training montage where the music's playing in the background and they're going through the. Whatever the movements are, they're out for a run, you know, like in the first Rocky movie, if you remember that Philadelphia sunrise. And he gets up the crack of dawn, drinks the eggs and goes out running. And then by the end of this, he's racing through the streets, right? Because he has that strength now. He has the ability to race. It's the training montage that always just inspires me. And I'm not alone. Because if you ever, if you know this, if you've ever seen the movie Rocky iv, there are two training montages, back to back. Literally two different songs, two different training montages that are separated by, I think, like 37 seconds worth of Adrian, his wife shows up in the middle of Russia, and then they have a few words, and then he starts training again. Anyways, people love the training montages. Paragraph 1248. I'm going somewhere with this. Paragraph 1248 talks about the catechumens should be properly initiated into the mystery of salvation. So grow in that practice of the virtues. Grow in that should be introduced into the life of faith, the liturgy, charity of the people of God to grow in all those things. Basically, the catechumenate, if you were to take snapshots, is a training montage. Okay, so that was my analogy. I don't know. Maybe you like it, maybe you don't, but it's all about getting ready. It's all about letting myself be formed, letting myself be trained in the spiritual life. And that's the goal, right? If I've already been baptized, then I have a post baptismal catechumenate. If you're not yet baptized, you have a pre baptismal catechumenate. It's all that formation, that training. Now, paragraph 1250-1252 highlights the fact that we baptize infants and that why do we baptize infants? First, because we're fallen, right, by the virtue of the fact that we're born in God's image. But we also experience the original wound, right? Original sin, that also we're under the dominion of darkness, that we need to be baptized. We need God's grace. Secondly, God's goodness is such that the sheer gratuitousness of the grace of salvation is particularly revealed in infant baptism, right? Because an infant has done nothing to merit this grace. And so it's completely. I love that. The sheer gratuitousness of the grace of salvation. God pours out his love on even infants. And also thirdly, the church and parents. If we were to deny an infant the grace of becoming a child of God, we would be denying an incredible, incredible gift. Now keep this in mind. 12:52 highlights that the practice of infant baptism is not new. It goes all the way back to explicitly talked about in the 2nd century in Christian writings. The new thing is not baptizing your child like the new thing is to be a Christian and to withhold baptism from your child. The old thing, that goes all the way back to the second century. And as it says here in the very, very Last line of 1252, it says from the beginning of the apostolic preaching, when whole households received baptism, infants may also have been baptized. That's kind of the assumption is that if there were any infants in that house, they were not precluded from baptism, but the entire household was baptized. So infant baptism is incredible and necessary. And it's a great, again, gratuitous gift of God's love. And so more on that tomorrow. But right now we just get to praise the Lord for the fact that we get to go through this training. This either post baptismal catechumenate, where we're formed in the whole Christian life, or if you're not yet baptized, pre baptism catechumenate, where we get to just become more and more the people God has called us to be. Oh, what a gift. Part of that training, of course, is prayer, and part of that training is the reality that we're not alone, that we belong to each other. That we're part of the body of Christ. And as members of the body of Christ, we pray for each other. Therefore, you know it's coming. Please pray for me. I am praying for you. Truly, my name is Father Mike. I cannot wait to see you tomorrow. God bless.