Baptism and Garabandal

                                              BAPTIZED FOR THE JUDGMENT OF LIGHT: GARABANDAL AND THE DRAMA OF BAPTISMAL FIDELITY

The apparitions of Garabandal cannot be read as an isolated episode of popular piety, nor as an extraordinary addition to Revelation. They are correctly understood only when inserted into the sacramental drama of the Church, especially in the mystery of Baptism, where the history of salvation begins in each concrete person. 

Garabandal does not announce something new; it denounces the forgetting of the essential. It is a maternal cry before a baptized humanity that no longer lives as such. Baptism is not merely a rite of initiation, but an ontological configuration. Through sacramental immersion, man is taken from the purely natural order and introduced into the supernatural order. As the Church teaches, Baptism makes us "partakers of the divine nature" (cf. 2 Peter 1:4), imprints an indelible character, and inserts us into the Mystical Body of Christ (cf. CCC, 1265–1274). 

This means that, from Baptism onwards, the Christian life is under the sign of judgment, not in a condemnatory sense, but in a biblical sense: to live permanently exposed to the truth of God. It is precisely here that Garabandal powerfully resonates. The message insists on conversion, penance, and the Eucharist lived with reverence, because Baptism, when not embraced existentially, becomes a sterile gift, almost a silent accusation. Our Lord already warned: "To whom much is given, much will be required" (Luke 12:48). Garabandal does not speak to pagans; it speaks to the baptized. Scripture presents Baptism as a true interior exodus. 

Saint Paul affirms that, in Baptism, we die and rise again with Christ (cf. Romans 6:3-11). This is not a moral metaphor, but a real event on the plane of grace. The baptized person belongs to Christ, was bought at a price (cf. 1 Corinthians 6:19-20). Therefore, the Christian life is not neutral: it either develops as fidelity or degenerates into sacramental infidelity. The Baptism of Jesus in the Jordan dramatically illuminates this truth. By entering the waters, Christ takes upon himself the weight of sinful humanity, sacramentally anticipating the Cross. The Jordan already points to Calvary. The heaven that opens there is the same heaven that will be definitively opened by the lance in Christ's side. When the Father proclaims: "This is my beloved Son" (Mt 3:17), He reveals not only who Jesus is, but who we are called to be in Him. 

The baptized person participates in this sonship, but also in this obedience to the end. Garabandal reminds us that this sonship is being lived superficially. The insistence on the Eucharist is not accidental. Baptism naturally tends towards the altar. Whoever is born again in water and the Spirit is called to live of the Flesh and Blood of the Son of Man (cf. Jn 6:53). However, when the Eucharist becomes routine, when the sense of the sacred is lost, Baptism is emptied of its transformative power. The sacrament of regeneration demands sacramental coherence. The penitential dimension of Garabandal is also profoundly baptismal. Baptism forgives all sins, but it does not eliminate concupiscence nor the possibility of falling. Therefore, the Church has always taught that the Christian life is a continuous penance, a spiritual struggle. Our Lady, in asking for sacrifices and penance, does not propose rigorism, but the logic of the Gospel: "Unless you repent, you will all perish" (Luke 13:3). Conversion is the ordinary way to keep baptismal grace alive. The call to the Warning, so characteristic of the spirituality of Garabandal, must be read in the light of Baptism as illumination. In the early Church, Baptism was called photismós, illumination. 

The Warning, understood spiritually, appears as an inner revelation of the truth of one's own soul before God. This is not foreign to Catholic tradition: each baptized person will journey towards the moment when their conscience will be fully illuminated by divine truth (cf. Rom 14:12; 2 Cor 5:10). Garabandal merely anticipates, pedagogically, this eschatological reality. Our Lady, as Mother, appears in Garabandal not to frighten, but to remind her children of their baptismal identity. She speaks as in Cana: "Do whatever he tells you" (Jn 2:5). And what did Christ say from the beginning of his preaching? "Repent and believe in the Gospel" (Mk 1:15). 

Baptism is the beginning of this faith; conversion is its perseverance. The crisis that Garabandal denounces is, fundamentally, a baptismal crisis: Christians who live as if they had not died to sin; baptized people who no longer recognize themselves as temples of the Spirit; children who have forgotten the Father. Therefore, the message is urgent. Not because time is running out, but because grace is being wasted. This meditation demands a personal response. Baptism is not something of the past; it is a permanent gift. Each Eucharist, each Confession, each act of penance is a renewal of baptismal promises. Garabandal asks us, with maternal delicacy and firmness: what have you done with your Baptism?

Garabandal is not a spiritual consolation for pious souls; it is an accusation directed at the baptized. Its message is not aimed at those who ignore Christ, but at those who have been immersed in His Name and live as if they had never died with Him. The drama revealed in Garabandal is not the lack of religion in the world, but sacramental infidelity within the Church. What resonates there is the lament of a Mother who sees children marked by Baptism, but disfigured in life. Baptism is an irreversible event. Through water and the Spirit, man is ontologically displaced: he ceases to belong only to himself and begins to belong to Christ (cf. 1 Cor 6:19). The theology of the Church is clear: the baptismal character imprints a permanent configuration that not even sin can erase. 

But what sin does not erase, it can profane. This is the central point of Garabandal: Baptism not lost, but betrayed. From the beginning, Sacred Scripture presents Baptism as a passage through God's judgment. The waters of the flood, which destroy and save at the same time, are a figure of Baptism (cf. 1 Peter 3:20-21). The Red Sea, which liberates Israel and buries Pharaoh's army, anticipates the same logic. To be baptized is to cross a point of no return: either one walks towards the Promised Land, or one dies in the desert. Garabandal denounces precisely this: a baptized generation that prefers the desert of lukewarmness to the radicality of the promise. 

The Baptism of Jesus in the Jordan is the definitive interpretative key. Christ enters the waters not to receive something, but to assume a destiny. The Spirit who descends does not spare him from the Cross; on the contrary, He sends him to it (cf. Matthew 4:1). When the Father proclaims His favor, He seals a path of obedience that will culminate in the abandonment of Golgotha. Every baptized person who hears inwardly "you are my son" also hears, at the same time, "take up your cross" (cf. Mt 16:24). To separate sonship from the cross is to fabricate a false Christianity. Garabandal unmasks this falsification. The insistence on penance is not accessory, but structural. Where there is no penance, Baptism degenerates into religious sentimentalism. Catholic doctrine has always taught that baptismal grace requires cooperation and spiritual combat. "Do not quench the Spirit" (1 Thess 5:19). 

However, lukewarmness—this typically baptismal sin—creates Christians who receive communion without fear, confess without repentance, and pray without conversion. Garabandal does not condemn; it exposes. The centrality of the Eucharist in the message is even more severe. Baptism confers the right to the altar, but also imposes the duty of reverence. Receiving the Body of the Lord in a state of grave sin is not only a moral failing; It is a sacramental contradiction, a false testimony against one's own baptismal identity. Saint Paul does not hesitate to use harsh language: "That is why many are weak and sick, and a number have died" (1 Cor 11:30). Garabandal echoes this forgotten seriousness. The call to the Warning reveals the most radical point of Garabandal spirituality: the restoration of inner truth. Baptism, called by the Fathers illumination, will be confronted with its existential reality. Each baptized person will be led to see, without masks, what they have done with the grace received. This does not contradict Catholic doctrine; on the contrary, it intensifies it. 

The particular judgment is certain; Garabandal suggests a merciful pedagogy before the final collapse of conscience. It is not about terror, but about truth—and truth saves or accuses. Mary appears in Garabandal as the wounded Mother of the Church. She does not speak as a pious devotee, but as one who knows the price of the Blood with which we were baptized. His appeal is simple and devastating: conversion, Eucharist, penance. Nothing extraordinary, because the extraordinary thing would be to remain indifferent after so much has been given. "Why do you call me 'Lord, Lord,' and do not do what I say?" (Luke 6:46). The sin denounced in Garabandal is not the explicit denial of faith, but practical apostasy: living as if God were not decisive, as if Baptism had no eternal consequences. This is the most dangerous sin, because it settles within religious normality. The baptized person becomes deaf to the call, blind to their own misery, comfortable in mediocrity. This text does not ask for admiration, it asks for decision. Garabandal does not call for "believing" in the apparitions, but for a return to Baptism. Renewing baptismal promises is not a symbolic rite; it is a sentence on one's own life. Renouncing Satan means breaking with concrete structures of sin. Believing in the Church means submitting to its sacramental discipline. Following Christ means accepting the logic of the Cross. In the end, we will not be judged by what we feel, but by what we have done with grace. Baptism has definitively placed us on the side of light—but light can be rejected. Garabandal confronts us with this possibility not to condemn us, but to pull us out of indifference. Because, on the last day, we will not be asked if we had spiritual experiences, but if we lived as baptized Christians. 

And this question, in the light of Garabandal, has already begun to resonate. May Our Lady lead us back to the waters of the Jordan, not to restart the sacrament, but to embrace its consequences. May she help us to live like those who have already been enlightened, have already died with Christ, and already belong to the Kingdom, even while still walking in this world. Because, in the end, there will only be two realities: the light welcomed or the light rejected. Baptism placed us before this choice—and Garabandal reminds us that it is unavoidable. From the small City of Mary, with prayers and my priestly blessing +

Garabandal Apostolate, January 2026