Baptised and Sent
Liam Bergin,
‘Baptised in Christ: Reborn for Mission’ in ‘Baptised and Sent’.
See www.synod.ie
Second Sunday of Lent
1 March 2026
The Hebrew word ‘Messiah’ means ‘anointed one’. It is translated as ‘Christos’ in Greek. Christ means ‘anointed one’ and Christians are the ‘anointed ones’ who share in the messianic mission of Christ. Through the power of the Holy Spirit, we who are reborn in the waters of baptism are anointed to proclaim the kingdom of God. The anointing ‘Christifies’ those who receive it as it bestows the gift of the Holy Spirit.
Anointing with oil is a very ancient and important ritual in the Judeo-Christian tradition. The Jews anointed three categories of people: priests, prophets and kings. Christians, by contrast, anoint everyone in baptism.
Baptism gives all a shared, if differentiated, responsibility for the life and mission of the Church, and calls baptised and ordained to work together. All baptised members of the Church participate together in the prophetic or teaching office, in the priestly or sanctifying office, and in the kingly or governing office of Christ.
This participation in the threefold mission of Christ is not delegated from the ordained ministry but ‘finds its source in the anointing of baptism, its further development in confirmation and its realization and dynamic sustenance in the Holy Eucharist’ (Christifideles Laici 14)
Also on www.synod.ie, see ‘Baptised and Sent in Lent’ – an accessible and easily led prayer resource for groups and families with the Sunday Gospels during Lent.
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Third Sunday of Lent
8 March 2026
Because of their participation in the teaching office, all the faithful, including those without a formal theological training, have an instinct for the truth. ‘God furnishes the totality of the faithful with an instinct of faith – sensus fidei – which helps them to discern what is truly of God’ (Evangelii Gaudium 119).
Participating in the priestly office enables the full and active participation of all in the celebration of the liturgy of the Church where the whole assembly offers praise and thanks to the Living God.
Participating in the kingly office empowers all the baptised to play an active part in the governance of the Church.
Together, participation in the threefold messianic mission of Jesus Christ calls for a Spirit-filled community that listens, prays, meditates, dialogues, accompanies, discerns, decides and acts as all the baptised journey in Christ to God the Father. Even as the difference between the common priesthood of the baptised and the ministerial priesthood of the ordained is recognised, the essential equality of the one People of God is maintained. Ordained ministers are to serve the community of baptised disciples in its responsibility for the one mission of the Church, a mission that takes on new requirements in an ever-changing world.
Also on www.synod.ie, see ‘Baptised and Sent in Lent’ – an accessible and easily led prayer resource for groups and families with the Sunday Gospels during Lent.
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Third Sunday of Lent (Laetare Sunday)
15 March 2026 • Mother’s Day
The Gospel of John (3:1-6) records the meeting between Jesus and Nicodemus, who comes under cover of darkness to speak with him. When Jesus declares that one must be born again, Nicodemus asks how a grown man can be born again: ‘Can he go back into his mother’s womb?’ Jesus responds that one must be ‘born through water and the Holy Spirit.’
The candidates for baptism who have received biological life in the womb of their mothers now receive new life in Christ and are born again as daughters and sons of God through water and the Holy Spirit. That is why the baptismal pond is referred to as a womb which begets people spiritually.
According to Genesis 1, creation took place in seven days. The eighth day, then, was considered the day of the new creation. During the early centuries, baptisms were often celebrated in specially constructed buildings or baptisteries. Many were octagonal in shape. This was to give architectural expression to the belief that in baptism the catechumens are born again and become a new creation. Many contemporary fonts are octagonal in shape (e.g. the new font in St Mary’s Cathedral in Kilkenny!).
Also on www.synod.ie, see ‘Baptised and Sent in Lent’ – an accessible and easily led prayer resource for groups and families with the Sunday Gospels during Lent.
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St Patrick, Bishop, Principal Patron of Ireland
17 March 2026 • Day of Prayer for Emigrants
What can we learn from St Patrick today?
- To entrust ourselves, our Church, our country to God’s protective care.
- To have full confidence in the Lord’s healing presence and power. ‘The Lord’s is the earth and its fullness, the world and all its peoples’ Ps 23.
- To give thanks for God’s special care and call to each of us, knowing that God took the initiative in our baptismal call and will sustain us day by day.
- To be devoted to reading the Gospels so that we take on the mind and heart of Christ Jesus and make decisions according to the mind of Christ.
- To be receptive to God’s will in all our trials, to trust him unreservedly, God uses these trials to shape our hearts and conform us to Christ Jesus.
- To be alert to all the opportunities we are given each day to proclaim the Gospel, and to know that whatever good we do is through God’s boundless grace.
- To believe in the importance of intercession for our people and all people at this time.
- Towards the end of his Confession Patrick makes perfectly clear that he ‘never had any reason, beyond the Gospel and its promises, ever to return to the people from whom I had formerly, barely escaped.’
Mother Marie Fahy
Abbess of St.Mary’s Abbey, Glencairn glencairnabby.org
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Fifth Sunday of Lent
22 March 2026
Baptism unites us to the saving death of Christ and enables us to share his life: ‘when we were baptised, we went into the tomb with him and joined him in death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the Father’s glory, we too might live a new life’ (Rom 6:3-4). When baptism is celebrated during the Easter Vigil, this connection between the paschal mystery and the new life given in baptism is readily made.
Triple immersion in the waters of baptism refers not just to the Father, Son, and Spirit, but symbolises participation in the three days that Jesus spent in the tomb before the Father raised him to life.
St Paul reminds us that new life with the risen Christ has already begun in those who have been baptised. Despite our frailty and sinfulness, despite our weakness and brokenness, ‘nothing can ever come between us and the love of God made visible in Christ Jesus our Lord’ (Rom 8:39). The Church is the community of the baptised, a community of redeemed saints and sinners that witnesses to Christ’s life now as it awaits the fullness of risen life at the end of time.
Also on www.synod.ie, see ‘Baptised and Sent in Lent’ – an accessible and easily led prayer resource for groups and families with the Sunday Gospels during Lent.
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Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Passion
29 March 2026
‘Christians … are called to bear fruit by sharing the gifts they have been given and to be witnesses to the Gospel. In the Christian community, all the baptised are enriched with gifts to share, each according to his or her vocation and way or condition of life.’ (For a Synodal Church 57).
A glance down any of our churches on a Sunday morning reveals a striking inventory. There are prophets and teachers, athletes and healers, labourers and miracle workers, poets and florists, linguists and singers, listeners and sharers, leaders and dreamers, pioneers and settlers. No one gift is more important than another. If one refuses to function or is impeded, then the whole body seizes up. Instead of boldly proclaiming the Kingdom, it limps blindly along, wracked by cancerous divisions. There is a variety of gifts but always the same Spirit. Within the diversity there is unity.
By virtue of baptism, women and men have equal dignity as members of the People of God. However, ‘women encounter obstacles in obtaining a fuller recognition of their charisms, vocation, and place in the various areas of the Church’s life. This is to the detriment of the Church’s mission’ (For a Synodal Church 60).
Also on www.synod.ie, see ‘Baptised and Sent in Lent’ – an accessible and easily led prayer resource for groups and families with the Sunday Gospels during Lent.
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