I got to thinking. The baptismal font is a good picture of God's grace. The one at our church is huge. It is big enough for many people to stand in and overflowing with holy water. It is a picture of God's grace. God pours it out lavishly on his people. Yet we don't experience it lavishly. We experience a few drops. Sometimes it all seems to miss us. Why is this? It is not because there is not enough water. It is because the priests can only spread a little. They are the limiting factor.
Yet we are not supposed to be drenched. We are to be reminded of our baptism. That is when we got soaked. That seemed interesting. Not to experience God today so much as to reconnect with a time I did experience God in a big way. We all have those. Maybe a really powerful confession. Maybe a retreat where you focused on God for an entire weekend. Maybe a small group fellowship where you got really honest. These things happen. We experience God. Maybe we make some promises. Yet we need to reconnect with those moments. We need to bring them back to our present reality and allow them to define us. Like St Paul said he was faithful to the vision he received on the road to Damascus. We need to be faithful to our moments of grace.
Yet grace being limited by priests spoke to me as well. Not so much the ministerial priesthood although we do have shortages there. More the baptismal priesthood. That is the sense in which we are all made prophets and priests and kings when we are baptized. How this gush of grace becomes a few drops because so few people actually respond to that calling and pass on grace to others. You just need to give them one drop. One drop gives them a chance to reconnect with who they are called to be. It might make them relive the moment they got drenched. Yet so few Catholics go there.
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