Mystagogic Catechesis 2: Concerning Baptism
MYSTAGOGIC CATECHESIS 2: Concerning baptism
Reading: Rom 6.3–14: ‘Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into his death?
1 Our daily explanations of the mysteries and our new instructions announcing new realities have a special value for you who have been made new and passed from the old state to the new. So I now have to put before you the sequel to yesterday's instruction so that you can understand the meaning of the rites which you celebrated in the inner room.
2 As soon as you entered, you took off your tunic, to show that you were putting off the old man with his deeds (cf. Col 3.9). Once you had taken it off you were naked, in this way imitating Christ naked on the cross, who in his nakedness ‘disarmed the principalities and powers’ and boldly ‘triumphed over them’ on the tree of the cross. Since the hostile powers made their lair in our bodies, you can no longer wear that old tunic—of course I am not referring to this visible one but to ‘the old man which was subject to the deceptions of its corrupting lusts’. May the soul that has once taken this old man off never put it on again, but rather say, like Christ's bride in the Song of Songs: ‘I have taken off my tunic. How could I put it on?’ (Cant 5.3). What a wonderful thing! You were naked in the eyes of all and felt no shame. In fact you were imitating the first man Adam, who was ‘naked’ in Paradise ‘but not ashamed’ (Gen 2.25).
3 Then, once you had removed your clothes, you were anointed with exorcised oil from the topmost hairs of your head to the lowest parts of your body, and became sharers in Jesus Christ, the true olive. You were cut from the wild olive and grafted on to the true olive, and began to share in the richness of the genuine olive. So the exorcised oil is a symbol of this share in the richness of Christ, and it wards off every trace of the enemy power. For just as the breathing of the saints and the invocation of God burns like the fiercest flame and chases away the demons, so too the invocation of God together with prayer gives this exorcised oil such power that it can burn away the traces of sin and even repel the hidden powers of the evil one.
4 After this you were led to the holy pool of sacred baptism, just as Christ was taken from the cross to the tomb which stands before you. Then you were each asked if you believed in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. You made the saving profession of faith and three times you were immersed in the water and came up from it again. There in the font you symbolically reenacted Christ's three-day burial. For just as our Saviour spent three days and three nights in the heart of the earth, so too when you came up the first time you were imitating Christ's first day in the earth and when you submerged his first night. A man in the dark can no longer see, but during the day a man lives in the light; so too when you submerged you could see nothing, as if it were night, but when you came up again it was as if you were in daylight. At the same moment you both died and were born; that saving water became your tomb but also your mother. So what Solomon said in another context could be adapted to you. For in his book he wrote: ‘There is a time for giving birth and a time for dying’ (Eccles 3.2 (LXX)). But with you it is the other way round: there is a time for dying and a time for being born, and one and the same time produces both results: your birth coincided with your death.
5 What a strange and wonderful thing! We did not literally die, we were not literally buried, we did not literally rise again after being crucified. We experienced these things only in symbols and representations; but salvation we experienced literally. Christ was really crucified and really buried and literally rose again, and all of this he did for our sake, so that by sharing his sufferings in imitation, we might gain salvation in truth. What unmeasured love this showed for mankind! Christ received the nails in his pure hands and experienced pain, and grants me salvation through sharing his experience without the pain and the toil.
6 No one should imagine that baptism only confers the forgiveness of sins and the grace of adoption, just as John's baptism only conferred the forgiveness of sins. We should be clear about this, that just as baptism cleans away our sins and conveys the gift of the Holy Spirit, so too it represents Christ's sufferings. This is the meaning of Paul's words which you heard proclaimed just now: ‘Do you not understand that we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were all baptized into his death? So we were buried with him through baptism’ (Rom 6.3–4). Perhaps in writing this he had in mind people who believed that baptism conveys forgiveness of sins and adoption, but didn't yet realize that it contains a share by imitation in what Christ suffered in reality.
7 It was to teach us that what Christ suffered ‘for us and our salvation’ truly and not in make-believe, and that we have become sharers in his sufferings—it was for this reason that Paul declared with such clarity: ‘For if we have been planted with him in the likeness of his death, we shall be planted with him also in the likeness of his resurrection’ (Rom 6.5). The expression ‘planted with him’ is well chosen, for it is here that the true vine was planted, and we have been planted with him through sharing in the baptism of his death. Concentrate all your attention on the apostle's words. He didn't say ‘if we are planted with him in his death’, but ‘in the likeness of his death’. It was a real death that Christ really experienced, for his soul was separated from his body; and his burial was real, for his holy body was wrapped in a clean winding-sheet, and everything was done for him in reality. For us, however, there is the likeness of his death and his sufferings, but of salvation not the likeness but the reality.
8 Now that you have been given a full explanation of these truths, I urge you to keep them in your memory, so that I can say of you, unworthy though I am: ‘I love you, because you always remember me and have kept the traditions which I passed on to you’ (1 Cor 11.2 adjusted). God, who has brought you to life from the dead, has the power to grant you to ‘walk in newness of life’ (Rom 6.4). For to him is the glory and the power now and for ever. Amen.