Do you ever wish someone could explain baptism to you like you’re seven? Come on, there’s no shame in it! Listen to Jimmy Akin explain the basics of why we’re baptized on Catholic Answers Live.
Caller: Why do we get baptized?
Jimmy Akin: We get baptized because Jesus wants us to be baptized, and the reason he wants us to be baptized is because of all the good that it will do for us. When we’re born, we are missing a kind of grace in our souls that we need to have in order to be in union with God, and that kind of grace is called sanctifying grace. And since we’re missing that, God wants to give it to us, and one of the ways he gives us sanctifying grace is by baptism. So that’s one of the good things that baptism does for us.
Baptism also makes us Christians, so we become part of the Christian family, and it also allows us to receive the other sacraments. We couldn’t receive the other sacraments if we hadn’t been baptized. And so those are just some of the good things that baptism does for us, but the basic answer is: Jesus wants us to be baptized so that we can have all these good things from God.