You know your birthday.  You know your significant other’s birthday – or if you don’t you should learn it quickly!  You know your anniversary.  If you’re a priest like myself, you know your date of ordination.  But….do you know the date of your baptism?

It is a question Pope Benedict asked in his first general audience of 2014.  Heck of a question, heh? Here are some of Pope Francis’ insights:

• Baptism isn’t merely “a simple rite, a formal act of the church,” he said. “It is an act that profoundly touches our existence” and radically changes the person.
• “A baptized baby is not the same as a baby who’s not baptized. A baptized person is not the same as a person who’s not baptized,”
• By being immersed in the living waters of Christ’s salvation, he said, “we can live a new life, no longer at the mercy of evil, sin and death, but in communion with God and our brothers and sisters,” embarking on a whole new life.
• “Thanks to baptism, we are able to forgive, to love — even those who offend us and hurt us; that we are able to recognize the face of Christ in the least and the poor,”

So… what is the day in history when you became a child of God and member of the believing community of Saints?