In order to live in the realm of time it is
important to understand this through the realm of the individual performing the
sacraments to fill humanity with all of its beauty. We understanding baptism as
being the start of the Christian life, however, we began with the Eucharist
because it is vital to understand the essentials to establish the cosmic dimensions
of life given in baptism. Western ideology today has distorted the message and
the essences of baptism within the life of the church. The distortion of
“original sin” is the meaning bestowed to comprehending what baptism does to
the believer. Original sin, the liberation and breaking away from it has given
a narrow meaning to the believer. Baptism was understood as the means to assure
the individual salvation of man’s soul. No wonder such understanding today has
distorted the baptismal liturgy. From an act involving the whole church and the
entire cosmos, it has become a private ceremony done at the corner of the
church by a private appointment, and in which the church has reduced the role
of baptism and the priest to a few dips of the baby into the water as the
necessity and sufficiency for the validity of the sacrament. Validity is a
veiling of the fullness and beauty of baptism into the church. Lately, it has
been rediscovered that the meaning of baptism is not rather a cleansing of
“original sin” but as an entrance into the church. Church as community, life,
and liturgy being bestowed upon the baby within the context of community. Church
is community and life is communal so how can one explain baptism as a
separation from the community and the life of the church? In the early church
baptism took place once a year during the solemn Easter vigil, and Easter
liturgy ironically grew out of the Paschal mystery of baptism. Baptism then was
understood as having an honest meaning for the new time of which Eastern today
is the manifestation of this new time. Baptism and chrismation was then finally
fulfilled in the Eucharist-being the sacrament of the church’s ascension to the
Kingdom, the sacrament of the age to come. In order to recovery the deep
theological understanding of baptism it must go back to the liturgy because it
is through the liturgy that we come to live out the sacrament of baptism in our
lives. Baptism is not something that happened while you were a baby and do not
remember. Baptism is the constant reminding of living out our liturgy in our
everyday life.
Within the early church preparation for baptism
lasted as long as three years. This was because Christianity was not the
dominate “religion” but rather saw more converts than babies coming into the
faith. With the rise of Constantine this all changed and infant baptism became
the norm. The importance of the catechumen was vital for the church to accept
within the community. This period in the life of the catechumen was important
that the first half of the liturgy in the Orthodox Church is called “The
Liturgy of the Catechumens”. The liturgical year compromising of Holy Week,
Theophany, Lent, Advent and finally Easter Vigil is shaped in there development
by the preparation of baptism and its celebration. The meaning of this that the
life of the church is the manifestation of our baptism and that baptism forms
the content which develops the root of what we call religious education.
Religious education not in the form of sitting down and gaining knowledge but
rather the revelation of the beauty received in the divine gifts of the new
life being bestowed by Christ himself. This then explains why the service of
baptism includes an “exorcism” and a confession of faith (taken by the mother
today). This is meant to show that the “catechumen” is leaving the past
(becoming dead) and will now be ready to entire into life made new through the
baptism. The catechumen is called to give up the world to die to the world. How
can one be ready to accept Christ if he or she is not ready to die to the
passions and the reduction of life the world offers? What ends up happening is
life becomes a set of “activities” to compensate the depth and beauty of
creation. Through the distortion of the activities like “bake sales”, “prayer
meetings”, and modern conceptions of the “I” and the “ME”-the individualistic
conceptions of the self motivated ambitions of humanity fuels life. However,
this is not what it means to be born in Christ. Being born in Christ is a
calling that embraces the good of all creation and is ready to be born a new.
If the church (the ecclesia) ceases
to be heaven on earth then we walk among the dead. The beauty of the liturgy,
baptism and life within the church is what it means to be alive in Christ. That
is when we are ready to go out into the world and live the liturgy as the body
of Christ. This is what is meant when the priest recites at the beginning of
the institution narrative “He instituted for us this great
Mystery of godliness, for, being determined to give Himself up to death for the
life of the world”. The life of the world is given in the mystery of Christ
death and resurrection. Once we embrace life in Christ we will not walk among
the dead but be alive in Christ and walk among the living.
Baptism
proper begins with the blessing of the water. Water here, to understand its
meaning; one must stop thinking of it as an isolated matter of the sacrament.
We must think in the opposite and realize that the water is the matter of the
sacrament because it stands for the whole of matter, which in baptism
represents the presence of the world itself. Water is the natural symbol of
life. There is no life without water. It can also be a symbol of destruction
and death. Lastly, it is a symbol of purification for one cannot be clean
without it. What is important to take in is that water represents the matter of
the cosmos, the world as the life of man. God created the world, blessed it and
gave it to man as food for life in order to be united in God. The blessing of
the water signifies then the redemption of matter to this initial and essential
meaning. To bless is to give thanks. Through giving thanks man acknowledges the
true nature of things that he receives from God, and thus makes them the way
they are meant to be. Through the baptismal liturgy it draws back to the theme
that has been echoed throughout the book. The world is proclaimed to be what
Christ revealed and made it to be-the gift of God to man, the means in which
man can be in communion with God. It is now that we baptize and this baptism is
baptism in Christ (cf. Rom 6.3). Just like Christ lead this individual to
Christ it is the same reason that existent begins in Christ and ends in Christ.
The world is then transformed into the sacrament of His presence. As St. Paul
says to the community in Rome by accepting Christ we are being baptized into
his death. This is based on the fact that the world rejected Christ and killed
him. The world refused to see him as being the fulfillment of what it means to
be united in God. By killing Christ the world condemned itself to death. The
only reality then the world has ever known is death. The difference between a
Christians perspective in comparison to the world is that our reality is only
made possible in Christ and nothing else. The word in its self-sufficiency
cannot sustain life because the reduction and shallowness of the world will
always leave humanity hungry and never satisfied. As long as humanity continues
to live after the “fashion” of this world, in other words, as long as we
continue to make life an end in itself, no meaning and no goal can stand, for
they are dissolved in death. This is explains why when we die (our physical
death) attached to the world death will be painful because death will become a
separation of what we most love. It is only in our ability to give it up freely
and unconditionally, when we put its meaning in Christ, will it become newness
of life which translates as a new possession of the world is given to us by
Christ. The world then in all its beauty and goodness will become the sacrament
of Christ’s presence. We will know this when we passing into the age to come we
will be able to say on our death bed “into your hands do I commend the spirit”.
Baptism is then the death of our selfless life, and it becomes a parallel image
of Christ death. Christ death was the unconditional self-surrender. Christ
trampling down death becomes the ultimate meaning and strength of life making
our own dying with him unite us in the new life in God. The newness of this
life is expressed in the sacrament when the newly baptized is worn in white. It
is the garment of a king. Man is now the king of creation once again. The world
now ceases to be death but life in the newly baptized. It becomes life because
he knows what to do with it. It becomes a restoration of joy and power of the
true human nature.
What
proceeds is chrismation which in the Orthodox Churches comes right after baptism.
Also known as confirmation, this represents the individual’s entry into the new
life of the Holy Spirit, which is the true life of the church. The whole being
is made the temple of God from the anointing the eyes, ears, mouth, nose and
his whole life is now a form “liturgy”. To be truly man means to be fully
“oneself”. The uniqueness of man comes from the personal confirmation he or she
takes. Through this uniqueness we become what God wants us to be and is to be
in communion with Him. If the church is the newness of life as previously
mentioned, life is not and should be a religious institution in which the
member is to be in “good standing” and has his book “checked off” for things to
be done within the concept of the institution. This religious piety can be very
dangerous and opposing to the Holy Spirit who is the giver of life. Rather
confirmation is the opening of oneself to the entire divine creation, to the
true universality of life. This is what is meant by Christ entering into our
lives and we embracing the fire that is bestowed on us through baptism and
chrismation.
It is in light of baptism can we within the Orthodox
Church understand penance. The power to absolve sins by the power of Christ
bestowed upon the priest. This definition has nothing to do with the original
meaning of penance in the church and its sacramental nature. The sacrament of
forgiveness is baptism because it does not operate as a removal of the guilt
but rather it is baptism into Jesus Christ who is forgiveness. The sin of all
sins-the “original sin”-is the distortion of love and our alienation from God.
This sin is what corrupts man to commit all other sins in the forgetfulness of
God. In Christ sin is forgiven, not in the sense that God has not forgotten but
because in Christ man has returned to God, and has returned to God because he
has loved Him and found in Him the only true object of love and life.
Repentance becomes then a return of our love, of our life, to God, and this
return is made possible in Christ because He shows us the true life and makes
us aware of our condemnation (page 78). In baptism both repentance and
forgiveness find their fulfillment. In baptism man wants to die to sin and is
given to death, and in baptism man wants the newness of life and is given
through forgiveness. However, sin is still in us and we are always falling away
from the newness of life. The fight of the new Adam against the old Adam is a
long and painful fight. The next part I cannot sum up because Fr. Alexander
speaks the truth about how many Christians today over simplify the role of
salvation in Christ when he says: “…and what a naive
oversimplification it is to think, as some do, that the "salvation” they
experience in revivals and "decisions for Christ,” and which result in
moral righteousness, soberness and warm philanthropy, is the whole of
salvation, is what God meant when He gave His Son for the life of the world. Page
78.” The true sadness sets in when people are not living out there sainthood as
St. Paul tells the Romans we are all called to be saints. Salvation is not an
“experience” or the feeling of “being saved” because through these emotions it
fills the heart with self-satisfaction never allowing the individual to live
out his baptism or liturgy in the world. Whoever then has been “satisfied” has
already received their reward and cannot thirst and hunger for the total
transformation and transfiguration of life which alone makes “saints”. This
thought process is dangerous because knowing your saved is a reduction to the beauty
of liturgy and baptism. Baptism is the forgiveness of sins and not the removal.
This is why we are called to dialogue with a priest because it is the priest
representing Christ who has the power to give the absolution. This introduces
the sword of Christ into our lives and makes it a real conflict of the pain and
suffering of growth. It is in the reality of baptism and realizing our sin that
true repentance becomes possible. The sacrament of penance is not then a sacred
act given by God to men. It is the power of baptism as it lives in the church empowering
the sacrament of penance.
By
way of conclusion I will let Fr. Alexander speak because his words truly
capture the essence of baptism and penance within the life of the church: In Christ all sins are forgiven once and for all,
for He is Himself the forgiveness of sins, and there is no need for any “new”
absolution. But there is indeed the need for us who constantly leave Christ and
excommunicate ourselves from His life, to return to Him, to receive again and
again the gift which in Him has been given once and for all. And the absolution
is the sign that this return has taken place and has been fulfilled. Just as
each Eucharist is not a "repetition” of Christ’s supper but our ascension,
our acceptance into the same and eternal banquet, so also the sacrament of
penance is not a repetition of baptism, but our return to the "newness of
life” which God gave to us once and for all. Page 79.
A few quotes from chapter four:
Baptism,
by its very form and elements—the water of the baptismal font, the oil of chrismation
refers us inescapably to "matter,” to the world, to the cosmos. In the
early Church the celebration of baptism took place during the solemn Easter
vigil, and in fact, the Easter liturgy grew out of the "Paschal mystery”
of baptism. This means that baptism was understood as having a direct meaning
for the "new time,” of which Easter is the celebration and the
manifestation. And finally, baptism and chrismation were always fulfilled in
the Eucharist—which is the sacrament of the Church’s ascension to the Kingdom,
the sacrament of the "world to come.” Page 68.
The
meaning of all this for us today is, first, that the whole life of the Church
is, in a way, the explication and the manifestation of baptism, and second,
that baptism forms the real content, the "existential” root of what we now
call "religious education.” The latter is not an abstract "knowledge
about God” but the revelation of the wonderful things that have "happened”
and happen to us in the divine gift of the new life. Page 69.
Baptism
proper begins with the blessing of the water. To understand, however, the
meaning of water here, one must stop thinking of it as an isolated
"matter” of the sacrament. Or rather, one must realize that water is the
"matter” of sacrament, because it stands for the whole of matter, which
is, in baptism, the sign and presence of the world itself. Page 72.
In
faith the whole world becomes the sacrament of His presence, the means of life
in Him. And water, the image and presence of the world, is truly the image and
presence of Christ. Page 74.
In its
self-sufficiency the world and all that exists in it has no meaning. And as
long as we live after the fashion of this world, as long, in other words, as we
make our life an end in itself, no meaning and no goal can stand, for they are
dissolved in death. It is only when we give up freely, totally,
unconditionally, the self-sufficiency of our life, when we put all its meaning
in Christ, that the "newness of life”—which means a new possession of the
world—is given to us. The world then truly becomes the sacrament of Christ’s
presence, the growth of the Kingdom and of life eternal. Page 74.
The
meaning of this "newness of life” is manifested when the newly baptized
person is clothed, immediately after baptism, in a white garment. It is the
garment of a king. Man is again king of creation. The world is again his life,
and not his death, for he knows what to do with it. He is restored to the joy
and power of true human nature. Page 75.
And in
Christ this sin is forgiven, not in the sense that God now has "forgotten”
it and pays no attention to it, but because in Christ man has returned to God,
and has returned to God because he has loved Him and found in Him the only true
object of love and life. And God has accepted man and—in Christ—reconciled him
with Himself. Repentance is thus the return of our love, of our life, to God,
and this return is possible in Christ because He reveals to us the true Life
and makes us aware of our exile and condemnation. Page 78.
The
feast is impossible without the fast, and the fast is precisely repentance and
return, the saving experience of sadness and exile. The Church is the gift of
the Kingdom—yet it is this very gift that makes obvious our absence from the
Kingdom, our alienation from God. It is repentance that takes us again and
again into the joy of the Paschal banquet, but it is that joy which reveals to
us our sinfulness and puts us under judgment. Page 79.
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