251. Water
251. WATER
St. Teresa said she learned more from contemplating water (the second thing God created, after light) than from all the books in the world. Is there some deep meaning in water that God used in making it the material vehicle of Baptism? What was in God’s mind and intention when He created water?
By divine institution water is the proper matter of Baptism, and with reason.
First, by reason of the very nature of Baptism, which is a regeneration unto spiritual life. And this answers to the nature of water in a special degree; wherefore seeds, from which all living things . . . are generated, are moist. . . . For this reason certain philosophers (Thales) held that water is the first principle of all things.
Secondly, in regard to the effects of Baptism, to which the properties of water correspond. For by reason of its moistness it cleanses; and hence it fittingly signifies and causes the cleansing from sins. By reason of its coolness it tempers superfluous heat; wherefore it fittingly mitigates . . . concupiscence. . . .
Thirdly, because it is suitable for the signification of the mysteries of Christ, by which we are justified. For, as Chrysostom says on John 3:5, Unless a man be born again, etc., When we dip our head under the water as in a kind of tomb, our old man is buried, and being submerged is hidden below, and thence he rises again renewed.
Fourthly, because by being so universal and abundant, it is a matter suitable for our need of this sacrament; for it can easily be obtained everywhere (III,66,3).
At the very beginning of Western philosophy we find the West’s first philosopher, Thales of Miletus, saying that “everything is (made of) water”. He probably said this because the ancients thought of everything as alive in some way and he noticed that everything alive needs water, nothing can live without water. St. Thomas would not say everything real is literally alive but that everything real acts: “first act” (existence) reveals itself in “second act” (characteristic activity). Even a “dead” rock resists pushing. Wholly passive matter is an abstraction. Only merely mental realities do not act in any way.
Thales put water at the beginning of philosophy just as God put it at the beginning of creation and at the beginning of life, both globally (life began in the seas) and individually (all plants and animals die without water). This makes water fitting to be the first instrument also of supernatural life in Baptism.
This is the first reason St. Thomas sees for the correspondence. The second is that as water both cleans and cools, so the grace of Baptism both justifies and sanctifies, washes us from Original Sin and strengthens us against actual sin by cooling the heat of our selfish desires.
Third, submersion in water drowns us; thus water naturally symbolizes death as well as life. Noah’s flood killed the world. Many primitive tribes have a terrifying story of a universal flood, which wipes out all life and even all form and order in nature, for water is formless. This makes it fit for Baptism since Baptism kills our “old man” so that Christ our “new man” can rise from the tomb. Christ is a killer—to the works of Satan. He heals by death and resurrection: of bodies, egos, desires, thoughts. Nothing that has not died will be resurrected to eternal life.
This is why total immersion is the preferred and most perfect symbolic form of Baptism, because it most obviously symbolizes death by drowning—although the Church approves sprinkling too, since this also signifies the washing away of the dirt of sin. (See the next page.) However, it must be with water. The quantity of the water is accidental, the quality is essential.
St. Thomas’ fourth reason shows that he understands God’s motherly practicality as well as His theological and poetical profundity.