In response to a question about how my view of my baptism has changed as a Catholic.

I was baptized twice.  Once as an infant in the United Presbyterian Church and once as an adult in the American Baptist Church because they required me to be re-baptized to become a member.  Before I started my journey towards the Catholic Church, as a non-denominational/Baptistic, born-again believer I viewed my adult baptism as the “real” one.  But as I became more Catholic in my thinking, I began to view my infant baptism as the “real” one.  My Baptist one became just a super wet “sprinkling” with water.

When I became a Catholic, I learned that my infant baptism had accomplished a lot more than incorporating me into the Body of Christ (Presbyterian understanding), like washing my original sin away, giving me the Holy Spirit, placing an indelible mark on my soul and on and on.  And I presented the certificate of my infant baptism as evidence of baptism for becoming a Catholic.

Since becoming a Catholic, my infant baptism has taken on added importance in my identification with and incorporation into Jesus as I have prayed the rosary and meditated on the mystery of the Baptism of Jesus in the Jordan where the Spirit descended and remained on Him. 

My infant baptism also seems to correspond to the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple because that is what my parents were doing when they presented me in church to be baptized.  And that is how my granddaddy, a devout Presbyterian elder, understood it.  He presented me with an RSV Bible that day for my parents to keep for me.  On the presentation page inside the front cover, he wrote, “To Howard, on the day he was presented to the Lord, from your Granddaddy” and he signed his name.

I pray for all the baptized that God would help them to recall and be faithful to their baptism and the call of God as I pray those mysteries.