It was late on December 31, 1999, at St. Alphonsus “Rock” Catholic Church in St. Louis, Missouri. We filled our new baptismal pool and prayed that the heater worked and nothing leaked. We were a little behind schedule, but we were determined to go through with our plans to baptize the first Catholics of the new millennium (ignoring all the arguments about flaws in the calendar).

I had always been taught that if I was going to use symbols, use them—don’t put three grains of incense in the thurible, don’t place two poinsettias in a cathedral-sized church, don’t sprinkle water when you can immerse someone in it. So I had always wanted to celebrate the sacrament of baptism in its fullest and preferred form—immersion—“which is more suitable as a symbol of participation in the death and resurrection of Christ” (Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults, 22).

Parishioner Bob Craddock, owner of ASI-Architectural Stone Inc., took charge of the project. The “Rock” Church parish is largely African American, and a highlight of the of the baptismal pool is the “cloud of witnesses” (Hebrews 12:1)—the names of hundreds of Black saints and ancestors engraved in the marble—that surround those being baptized.

Our original date for the pool’s inauguration was the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, but as talk about the new millennium grew, Redemptorist pastor Maurice J. Nutt decided to celebrate the first baptisms just after midnight on New Year’s Eve during our Watch Night service. This traditional practice in many African American churches commemorates the night of December 31, 1862, when slaves gathered in eager anticipation of the January 1 enactment of the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863.

On December 31, 1999, the children were prepared, the towels stacked, and the water heated. God’s people had anxiously gathered to celebrate the sacrament of baptism. I had baptized a lot of babies in my nine years of ordained ministry, yet I was not fully prepared for what was to come.

Standing in that water, thrusting these young lives under its surface and then drawing them forth again was a potent experience. Water—this cleansing and life-giving element—was splashing everywhere. There was no hiding from its influence. It completely washed over and drenched these new Christians, so perfectly symbolizing the love and protection of God. This was baptism as it was meant to be celebrated. These children knew they had been immersed into the death of the Lord and brought forth into the newness of life.

This wasn’t my first brush with immersion. During my first year in the seminary, my associate pastor asked for help with a project he was planning for the Easter Vigil. Fr. Jim had sworn me to secrecy. As I walked into St. David’s church early Saturday morning, Father was standing in the sanctuary next to a feed trough. He smiled and said, “Quick! Help me disguise this thing before the other decorators get here, and remember, not a word to anyone.” (Sorry, Father.)

That night, those to be baptized stepped into a 5-feet by 2-feet “pool” and had large amounts of water poured over their heads. It wasn’t quite immersion, but it symbolized immersion better than a small trickle over a baptismal font ever could. The parish must have agreed, because a couple years later St. David was of the first Catholic churches in the St. Louis Archdiocese to permanently install an immersion pool.

The copper pool blended beautifully with the rest of the sanctuary, and the elect of God were ceremoniously plunged beneath its crystal waters and brought forth to new life, cleansed from the stain of sin and initiated into the community of believers. It was a beautiful celebration of the sacrament of baptism. One could easily imagine John the Baptist immersing his cousin into the waters of the Jordan.

Several years later I returned to St. David to help decorate for Easter, and I was surprised to see the pool was gone. I was told it had sprung a leak and was out being repaired. Imagine my surprise when I climbed into the attic to retrieve decorations and spotted the copper baptismal pool.

I wasn’t sure which upset me more—that this beautiful form of baptism was no longer being used, or that the pastor had told people the pool was leaky rather than ’fess up to not wanting to celebrate baptism by immersion.

Unfortunately, he wasn’t the only one with an aversion to immersion. Years later another pastor told his congregation they couldn’t use their immersion pool because the heater was broken. Those sitting near the pool were puzzled, because they saw steam rising from the “unheated” water.

Why did these pastors do this? What exactly is their aversion to baptism by immersion? Why do some Catholics turn up their noses and say, “That’s how Protestants do it,” as if that’s a valid reason not to do something?

Granted, immersion isn’t without its complications: What will people wear? Where will they change? Who will clean the pool? Where will it fit? How will we heat it? But the reasons not to use immersion don’t outweigh the reasons to immerse.

The biggest obstacle is probably that Catholics have been trained to settle for less. When it comes to liturgy, we like things simple and quick. We prefer to sing only a couple verses of the songs, we select the shorter form of the reading, we omit anything marked “optional,” we restrict the homily to eight minutes, we abhor announcements or other additions to the Mass. If it isn’t over in its usual 57.3 minutes, we sneak out the door after Communion. Well, isn’t it true? I’ll let you in on a little secret: Pastors are so often worried about upsetting people’s timetables that they shortchange them and God.

Maybe we have an aversion to immersion because it reminds us we’re not living up to the awesome potential of our own baptism: “Be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Mt 5:48).

No matter how much or how little water is used, the person is still baptized. But when baptism is just a little sprinkle, it’s easier to quickly move on with our lives. When we witness someone being immersed three times, we begin to understand the concept of dying in the Lord. We see the trust involved and the total abandonment of everything else. In baptism we turn the totality of our lives over to God.

Human beings fear change. We are often suspicious of anything different. But the Second Vatican Council taught us that so much of what we think is new and different is not new at all. As Paul Turner points out in his article on immersion in the July/August 2010 issue of Liguorian, despite what artwork commonly depicts, Jesus was most certainly immersed in the waters of the Jordan.

Witnessing a baptism can be a profound event. If more people witnessed baptism celebrated by full immersion, there would be an outcry for it. Indeed, after witnessing those first baptisms by immersion, many of our parishioners wanted to be rebaptized, which of course is impossible. I understood their desire, however, because my own faith and commitment to my Lord had somehow deepened.

Baptism is our first encounter with our Redeemer—should it not be the most we can make of it? Should not the celebration of the sacrament outshine the party afterward?

Vatican II called all of the faithful to “full and active participation.” I can think of no fuller and more active way to begin one’s faith journey than to be fully immersed into the saving and life-giving waters of baptism.

Father Rick Potts is coordinating editor of Liguorian and promoter of Word and Mission for Liguori Publications.