“Christian, remember your dignity!”

By Fr. John Roderick, F.S.C.B.
December, 2026

In the liturgical life of the Church, we find ourselves making what seems to be a leap from the Epiphany of the Christ Child last Sunday to the Baptism of now adult Jesus Christ this Sunday. Is there any meaning to placing the baptism of Christ so close to the end of our Christmas season? I have been helped to reflect on the relationship between the birth of Christ and the gift of baptism by a homily by Saint Leo the Great, found on Christmas Day in the Office of Readings of the Breviary. I look forward to reading this beautiful meditation each year. In this reflection, I would like to share with you and comment on a short section of this incredible sermon. I hope it can be a help to understand the relationship between the gift of the birth of the Christ Child and how we share and participate in this fact through the sacrament of Baptism.

St. Leo the Great is recognized as being one of the greatest Popes to have led the Catholic Church. He was consecrated on September 29, 440, and his pontificate lasted more than 21 years. It was undoubtedly one of the most important in the Church's history. Pope Leo died on November 10, 461, and is buried near the tomb of St. Peter. Pope Benedict gave a wonderful introduction to St. Leo the Great in his general audience on March 5, 2008, if you would like to discover more of this incredible saint.

Here is a small passage of his Christmas sermon that has been passed down to us since the fifth century:

Beloved, let us give thanks to God the Father, through his Son, in the Holy Spirit, because in his great love for us, he took pity on us, and when we were dead in our sins, he brought us to life with Christ, so that in him we might be a new creation. Let us throw off our old nature and all its ways and, as we have come to birth in Christ, let us renounce the works of the flesh.

Christian, remember your dignity, and now that you share in God’s own nature, do not return by sin to your former base condition. Bear in mind who is your head and of whose body you are a member. Do not forget that you have been rescued from the power of darkness and brought into the light of God’s kingdom.

Through the sacrament of baptism, you have become a temple of the Holy Spirit. Do not drive away so great a guest by evil conduct and become again a slave to the devil, for your liberty was bought by the blood of Christ.

God’s Beloved. Pope St. Leo begins by recalling that we are God’s beloved. This is our truest identity before God. The word “beloved” evokes the words of the Father in the story of the baptism of Jesus. After Jesus was baptized, “A voice came from the heavens saying, ‘This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased’” (Matthew 3:17; Mark 1:11; Luke 3:22). In a similar manner, on the day of our baptism, through the words and actions of the priest or deacon, our heavenly Father reached down from heaven, took us into his arms, and repeated to us these very same words, “You are my beloved son, you are my beloved daughter.” The Catechism of the Catholic Church reminds us that “through Baptism we are freed from sin and reborn as sons of God; we become members of Christ, are incorporated into the Church and made sharers in her mission” (1213).

In his great love for us he took pity on us. These words express the heart of Christmas as the mystery of the revelation of the Father’s great love for humanity. One can hear an echo of the popular verse from the Gospel of John, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life” (3:16). In the First Letter of John, the same author remarkably describes the primacy of love in the Christmas story, “In this way the love of God was revealed to us: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might have life through him. In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as expiation for our sins” (1 John 4:9-10).

We have come to birth in Christ. Here, Pope Leo is inviting his listeners to recognize that all of this is possible today through the gift of the sacrament of Baptism. Here, one hears an echo of Jesus’ dialogue with Nicodemus, “Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God” (John 3:5). On Christmas Day and multiple times during the Christmas Octave we have heard repeated this great news from the Prologue of the Gospel of John, “But to those who did accept him he gave power to become children of God, to those who believe in his name, who were born not by natural generation nor by human choice nor by a man’s decision but of God” (John 1:12-13).

Christian, remember your dignity. In this invocation, Pope Leo the Great calls his listeners to remember the truth of who they are before God. We are Christians, our lives participate and share in the life of Jesus Christ, the only Son of God. This invitation is an echo of a reading that accompanies the Liturgy of the Hours every Sunday during the season of Advent, “It is now the hour to wake from sleep, for your salvation is closer than when we first accepted the faith” (Romans 13:11). There are so many sins and distractions that cause us to forget who we truly are and fall asleep spiritually. The liturgy of the Catholic Church and the brothers and sisters the Lord has placed close to us exists to continuously re-awaken us to our real dignity before the Father.

Now that you share in God’s own nature. The great pontiff desires to remind his listeners that through the mystery of Christmas and by virtue of our baptism, we truly share in God’s divine nature. The Fathers of the Church said that God became man so that man may become like God. These words echo a great affirmation found in the Second Letter of St. Peter, “He has bestowed on us the precious and very great promises, so that through them you may come to share in the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4).

Do not forget that you have been rescued. Once more, Pope Leo the Great invites us to overcome our forgetfulness. As followers of Christ, we tend to regularly forget our true baptismal identity and the gift God the Father has given to us through sending his son Jesus Christ to redeem us from our sins. When I do the examination of conscience, I have noticed that the majority of my sins have their origin in forgetting my baptismal and vocational identity. The Tempter loves to sow seeds of doubt in our relationship with the Father. The Letter of the Colossians beautifully summarizes this, “He delivered us from the power of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (Colossians 1:13-14).

Through the sacrament of baptism, you have become a temple of the Holy Spirit. Pope Leo the Great ends this part of his homily by returning to the mystery of baptism. On the day of our baptism, God the Father sent the Holy Spirit down upon us to dwell forever in the temple of our hearts. The Letter to the Romans expresses this well: “The love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us” (Romans 5:5). We now have a Divine Guest living within us and indwelling our lives.

Our God dwells in us through baptism. These words once again echo an important reminder that St. Paul gave to the early Christian community in Corinth, “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been purchased at a price. Therefore, glorify God in your body” (1 Corinthians 6:19-20).

This weekend, as we celebrate the Feast of the Baptism of Jesus which ends the liturgical season of Christmas and marks the beginning of Ordinary Time, let us take a moment to remember the incredible gifts that God has given to the world through the birth of his Son and through the sacrament of baptism. St. Leo the Great reminds us that daily remembrance of our identity as children of God and the memory God’s presence in the life of the Church are the secret to a life filled with joy and peace.

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Image featured in the web banner: Baptism of Christ, Jacopo Tintoretto, 1580s, oil on canvas, detail, Cleveland Museum of Art, Public Domain

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