After his Resurrection, Jesus sends his disciples, telling them: "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.". It is not an easy order: "disciples to all peoples". We are among them. And baptize them all "in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit".
The Church has done so ever since: any other formula or wording would not be valid. To baptize is to immerse, to be washed, to participate in the life and death of Christ. When James and John asked Our Lord for the first places in his kingdom, thinking that he was going to establish an earthly and political one, Jesus answered with these mysterious words: "Can you drink the cup that I shall drink, or be baptized with the baptism with which I shall be baptized?" (Mk 10:38). Here, by "baptism" Jesus means his passion and death. In other words: "Just as I plunge into the depths of human suffering, are you willing to plunge yourself also? Are you willing to share in my baptism, my suffering, my death?
When we are baptized in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, we also enter into the life of the Trinity. When we baptize a baby - or an adult - and immerse it in water or pour water on the child's head, we are immersing that child in the very life of the Trinity, we could say that we are pouring the Trinity on and into that child.
The mystery of the Trinity opens us to the mystery of God's inner life, which is clearly beyond our comprehension. If we could understand God, he would not be God. God is by definition infinite, and we are finite. There is always more to discover. As St. Catherine of Siena wrote in the 14th century: "God is infinite.You are a mystery as deep as the sea, in which the more I seek, the more I find; and the more I find, the more I seek.".
Praying is like diving into God, into divine life. We do not need oxygen, or rather, faith is our oxygen and the angels and saints guide us. The sea is both dark and full of light and there is no danger of drowning. We are offered the opportunity to immerse ourselves in a higher way of life. We need to know each person of the Trinity individually. We can pray to God in general, as God, but our relationship with God will be deeper by dealing with each person. And let us do our best to immerse, to immerse, others in the life of the Trinity through our witness. We are now sent to make disciples of all nations, beginning with our own.
