Have you ever wondered what St. John the Baptist meant when he said to Christ: “I need to be baptized by you, and yet you are coming to me?” (Matthew 3:14). St. John was talking about the uniqueness of Jesus’s baptism of the Holy Spirit in contrast to his own baptism of repentance. St. John was a humble man who fully recognized the limitations of his baptism with water that invited people to change through external acts of repentance, like washing in the river Jordan.

John’s baptism, however, could not change the human heart.

Only the baptism of Christ can change the human heart because Christ’s baptism gives us a new spirit, the Holy Spirit. This baptism of the Holy Spirit has the power to overcome the limitations of the human spirit, to change our attitudes, and to make us more Christ-like in our behavior. It has the power to make us more than we are.

To appreciate the distinction between John’s external baptism of repentance and Jesus’s baptism of the Holy Spirit is to understand the uniqueness of Jesus’s baptism to change hearts and remove the roots of sin.

In Okeechobee, Florida, there is a maximum security prison. Each year, a group of Christian men, called Kairos, gives a retreat to the prisoners. I participated in several of these retreats. They are the real thing and I was a witness to the inner change that was wrought in the lives of the prisoners. It was truly remarkable, if not miraculous.

It is well known that when inmates are released from prison, many of them end up back in prison. Keeping the rules does not, in itself, guarantee rehabilitation and that’s why the recidivism rate of prisoners is so high. The recidivism rate for those who participated in the retreats dropped to zero. Why? The change that was wrought in the lives of the inmates was not external, it was internal. The inmates found the key to their own rehabilitation, not in rules geared to punish and control, but in the power of God’s love to heal them from within. I’ll never forget what one of the inmates said to me: “If only I had known this earlier, I would not have ended up in here.” He made this remark during one of our group sessions. He was speaking for the other inmates as well.

In the Gospel, Jesus says: “unless you repent, you will perish” (Luke 13:3). But, real repentance starts from within. It comes from a change of heart or attitude that will determine what you do. If your heart is in the right place, your actions will bear good fruit. If your heart is in the wrong place, your actions will produce bad fruit. For example, if you are a greedy person, you will do anything to get your own way even if that means harming or destroying others or spreading lies and slander about those you perceive as obstacles to your goals.

True repentance means plucking out greed from within yourself if you wish to follow Christ. Some people think greed is acceptable in a competitive culture where winning by any means is touted as success. And so they say: “nothing succeeds like success.” But, is that success if you succeed without integrity of spirit?

Jesus reminds us that all evil acts come from the deep recesses of the human soul, from attitudes of hatred, pride, greed, and so forth (Matthew 15:19). To live the baptism of Christ, to follow His example, is to be prepared to abandon those bad attitudes we are born with and to replace them with the attitudes of Christ in the gospel. And, let’s not forget that Jesus has gifted us with eight blessed attitudes, called Beatitudes (The gospel of Matthew, chapter 5:1–10 ).

You cannot put new wine into old wines-skins, Jesus tells us, for the new wine will burst the old wines-skins (Mark 2:21-22). In the same way, you cannot possess the Holy Spirit (the new wine of Christ) if you cling to, rather than abandon, selfish attitudes. You must repent of the old in order to put on the new.

Make it your special project to let go of anything that prevents you from possessing the attitude of Christ which is the Holy Spirit. Without the baptism of the Holy Spirit, how can you possess the kingdom of God within you?

—Fr. Hugh Duffy