Hi, I'm Edward Sree, and welcome to All Things Catholic, where real faith meets real life.

All right, welcome to the special edition of All Things Catholic. I'm Edward Sree here on location in Rome,

right outside the Great Basilica of St. John Lateran. We've been on pilgrimage here,

one of the first American groups coming back to Rome. We've been told by all the places we've been,

we've been to St. Peter's, we've been to the Catacombs, but now we're coming to St. John Lateran.

And what we're doing is we're standing up before we go into the magnificent Basilica.

We're standing outside this very old structure here that was built by the Emperor Constantine.

So this structure here goes all the way back to the 300s. This was the Baptist street, the famous Baptist street.

And this is so important to understand what was going on in the early church.

So important to understand the Basilica that we're going to see.

What I want you to do, though, is I want you to imagine being a Roman citizen,

and you grew up in a pagan culture, but you came across some Christians,

and you're removed by their witness, and you're thinking about this Christian thing,

and thinking about becoming a Christian. And so you go through the early process of what we call today, R-C-I-A,

and you're going through this intense preparation, spiritual preparation, moral preparation,

catacetical preparation. And then finally, on the climactic day, you come to this very building.

You come right here to be baptized. You come to the Bishop of Rome. The Pope is going to baptize you in this building.

And what I want to share with you is what happened inside here, because everything you did in this building,

all of the rituals, the words, the symbols were there to really wake you up to realize how profound a moment this was,

and it was all there to tell you about the profound transformation really taking place inside of you,

that you were being changed in this moment. So what happened when you came in to this baptistry?

First thing you would do is you would face West. You would face West, and you would say a prayer,

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