If I were to ask you to write a list of events that have changed your lives, chances are it would include things like meeting your spouse, earning a degree, accepting a position, the birth of a child, or a thousand and one other events, meetings, or moments.
Chances are that the day of your baptism was not on the list.  Baptism is an event that is so profoundly a part of us that we take it for granted as a significant event, like the day of our own birth, which is the first most significant event that has happened to us.
Baptism changes us profoundly.  It is through baptism that we are freed from the sin of Adam and Eve, though we still retain our fallen nature and the effects of sin.  It is through baptism that our relationship with God is changed. We are now among the elect, those who share in life and relationship with the Son. We are through baptism sons and daughters of God, and thus heirs like the Son to the Kingdom of Heaven.
It is through baptism that all the other sacraments are open to us.  It is through the sacraments that we are nourished and sanctified.  It is through the sacraments that we become God’s holy people. . .the Church. Through this life of grace we grow in our relationship with God, Whom we can now call Father.
This is the great gift that Jesus came to bring us. Today we celebrate the Baptism of the Lord.  We also celebrate our own baptism. May the grace of our baptism be renewed within us that we may live more fully our new life in Christ.
Msgr. Cox

Baptism of the Lord by the anonymous “Master of St. Bartholomew Altar,” who
may have been a Carthusian monk. (ca. 1485-1500)