Mystagogic Catechesis 1: To The Newly Baptized
MYSTAGOGIC CATECHESIS 1: To the newly baptized
Reading: 1 Peter 5.8–11: ‘Be sober and wakeful…’
1 True-born and longed for children of the Church, for some time I have been looking forward to the day when I would explain to you these spiritual and heavenly mysteries. But since I saw clearly that seeing is much more convincing than hearing, I waited until the present moment, until this night had made you more receptive to what I was going to say, so that I could lead you into the brighter and more fragrant meadow here in Paradise. Besides, you are now able to understand the more divine mysteries concerning baptism, the divine source of life. Since then it remains for me to spread before you a feast of more perfect instruction, listen and I shall explain these things for you in greater detail. In this way you will be able to learn the meaning for you of what happened on that night of your baptism.
2 You began by entering the outer hall of the baptistery. Standing with your face to the west, you heard a voice instructing you to stretch out your hand, and you renounced Satan as though he stood there before you. You ought to know that the symbolic meaning of these events is to be found in the Old Testament. For when the cruel tyrant Pharaoh in his anger was oppressing the free and noble Hebrew people, God sent Moses to rescue them from their sufferings as the Egyptians’ slaves. The doorposts were smeared with the lamb's blood to make the destroyer avoid the houses bearing the sign, and miraculously the Hebrew people were set free. After their release Pharaoh pursued them, and when he saw that the sea parted miraculously for them, he still pressed on, following in their footsteps, until suddenly he was submerged to be drowned in the Red Sea.
3 I invite you now to turn your attention from the old to the new, from symbol to reality. There Moses was sent by God to Egypt; here Christ is sent from the Father into the world; there to lead his oppressed people out of Egypt, here Christ is sent to rescue his people in the world who are afflicted by sin; there the blood of the lamb warded off the destroyer, here the blood of the spotless Lamb Jesus Christ puts the demons to flight. Of old the tyrant pursued the people into the sea; in your case this headstrong, shameless demon, who is the origin of all evil, followed you even into the springs of salvation. The earlier tyrant was drowned in the sea; here the tyrant disappears in the water of salvation.
4 Nonetheless you hear a voice telling you to stretch out your hand and say to him as if he were there before you: ‘I renounce you, Satan.’ I want to tell you why you stand facing west, for you need to know. The west is the region of visible darkness, and Satan is himself darkness and exerts his power in the dark. This is the meaning of the symbol of facing the west to renounce the prince of darkness and gloom. What then did you each stand and say? ‘I renounce you, Satan, you evil and savage tyrant’, meaning: ‘I no longer fear your strength. For Christ has abolished it by allowing me to partake of his blood and his flesh, so as to destroy death by death through these his sufferings and to release me from perpetual slavery (cf. Heb 2.14–15). I renounce you, you subtle and crafty serpent. I renounce you, you schemer, who on the pretext of friendship introduced all wickedness and brought about the rebellion of our ancestors. I renounce you, Satan, author and partner in every evil.’
5 Then you are told to pronounce a second phrase: ‘And all your works’. Satan's works are every sin, which you must renounce, in the same way that someone who has escaped from a tyrant has escaped from his weapons as well. Every kind of sin is numbered among the devil's works. But I want you to realize that your words, especially at such an awe-inspiring moment as this, are inscribed in God's invisible records. So if ever you are caught doing something that contradicts your words, you will be judged a criminal. So renounce Satan's works, by which I mean all irrational actions and thoughts.
6 Then you say: ‘And all his pomp’. These are the devil's pomp: a passion for the theatre, horse-races, hunting and all other such vain pursuits as those from which the saint begged God to free him when he said: ‘Turn away my eyes from beholding vanity’ (Ps 118 (119).37). Do not indulge in a passion for the theatre, where the actors put on indecent spectacles full of every kind of shameless obscenity, and effeminate men perform wild dances. Do not share the passion of hunters who expose themselves to wild beasts in order to indulge their wretched stomachs; to pamper their bellies with food they become themselves food for the stomachs of savage beasts. To tell the truth, for the sake of their belly, which is their own God, they fight for their lives in single combat on the edge of a precipice. Avoid the races, a mad spectacle which unseats the soul. All these things are the devil's pomp.
7 There are other things numbered among the devil's pomps, objects hung up in the temples of idols and at their feasts, such as meat and loaves, which are polluted by the invocation of abominable demons. For just as in the Eucharist the bread and wine before the invocation of the adorable Trinity was ordinary bread and wine, but after the invocation the bread becomes Christ's body and the wine Christ's blood, so too these foods which form part of Satan's pomp are of their own nature ordinary food, but are contaminated by the invocation of demons.
8 Next you say: ‘And your worship’. The devil's worship consists of prayers in the temples of idols, honours paid to lifeless idols, the lighting of lamps or burning of incense by springs and rivers. Some people have been tricked by dreams or demons into acting in this way, thinking they will even find a cure for bodily ailments, but you must have no part in such doings. Taking the auspices, divination, omens, amulets, writing on leaves, the use of charms or other spells—such things are the devil's worship. So avoid such actions, for if you give way to them after renouncing Satan and siding with Christ, you will find the tyrant will treat you more savagely. Perhaps he treated you before as one of his family and spared you from some of the harshness of his service; but now that you have bitterly enraged him, not only will you lose Christ but you will learn what Satan is really like. You heard us telling you the story in the Old Testament about Lot and his daughters, didn't you? Wasn't he saved with his daughters when he reached the mountain, but his wife was turned into a pillar of salt, pilloried for all eternity to preserve the memory of the bad disposition she showed in looking back. Think of your own good, then, and once you have put your hand to the plough (cf. Lk 9.62), don't turn back to the bitter concerns of this life. Escape to the mountain, to Jesus Christ, to the stone cut without human hands which filled the world (cf. Dan 2.34–45).
9 So when you renounce Satan and trample underfoot every contract you have made with him, you annul the old treaty made with hell, and there opens before you God's paradise which he planted in the east, and from which our ancestor was expelled because of his disobedience. You symbolize this by turning from the west to the east, which is the region of light. Then you are instructed to say: ‘I believe in the Father and in the Son and in the Holy Spirit and in one baptism of repentance.’ I spoke to you at length about these things in the earlier instructions according to the grace God gave me.
10 So be strengthened by these words, and be sober. For our enemy the devil, as we have just heard in the reading, is prowling round like a lion seeking someone to devour. In the past death was strong and devoured; but now in the time of the holy font of rebirth ‘God has taken away all tears from every face’. Now that you have put off the old man (cf. Col 3.9), you mourn no longer; having put on Jesus Christ, ‘the robe of salvation’ (Is 61.10 (LXX)), you are in festal mood.
11 These events took place in the outer room. God willing, when in our next explanations of the mysteries we enter the holy of holies, we shall learn the meaning of the rites which were celebrated there. To God the Father are glory, power and majesty with the Son and the Holy Spirit for ever and ever. Amen.