Faith is this capacity to connect, to relate, and to persevere. It’s not about belief. To believe in the Good News is to have faith in our own capacity to be the good news, to be part of the Good News, rather than part of the bad news. To be baptized doesn’t mean to go to the church and speak to the priests and get an appointment and get your name or the name of your child put onto the register. I mean that’s an outward sign of it for some, but for many it’s less and less. But what does baptism mean? There’s the baptism of water but Jesus said get ready for the baptism of Spirit. And that’s what we celebrate in the Feast of the of Pentecost: baptism of the spirit where we find that we are touched by this reality of the Spirit that we can only find deep within ourselves and beyond our self-centeredness, beyond our ego. That Spirit which then fills every corner of our life, freeing us from all that we need to be liberated from. And filling us with an power and an energy and a hope that we didn’t think we were capable of: the baptism of the Spirit.