I baptize you...

Easter is the season for celebrating new life.  One way we at St. Thomas celebrate Easter’s new life is to baptize children during mass.  While it is a common practice to celebrate a child’s baptism outside of mass--with only the family and perhaps a few close friends present--this misses the connection to the larger Church community.  Celebrating the baptism of a child during Sunday Mass helps everyone to see more clearly the rich connection between baptism and the community.  When children are baptized, they are not only beginning a relationship with God, they are beginning a relationship with the community.  By baptism, they are incorporated (from the Latin corpus, meaning “body”) into the Body of Christ.  Further, as the Rite of Baptism for Children tells us, the responsibility of raising a child in the life of faith doesn’t only belongs not only to the child’s parents, but also to the community:

The people of God, that is the Church, made present in the local community, has an important part to play in the baptism of both children and adults.  Before and after the celebration of the sacrament, the child has a right to the love and help of the community.  RBC #4

The community is called to help support and nurture the faith of the child as he or she grows in communion with Jesus Christ.

The ritual text then goes on to affirm that sacraments are communal by nature:

…The faith in which the children are baptized is not the private possession of the individual family, but it is the common treasure of the whole Church of Christ. RBC #4

Celebrating baptism during Mass also helps to bring out the meaning of the sacrament.  To be baptized means to share in the death and resurrection of Jesus.  Witnessing a baptism during a Eucharistic liturgy, where we commemorate Christ’s dying and rising, further acknowledges the paschal reality of baptism and the child’s incorporation into that reality.

Since most of us were infants at the time of our own baptism, we don’t have a strong memory of the event.  Experiencing the baptism of an infant or a child can renew our own baptism.  Witnessing the child’s innocence, dependence and vulnerability helps us to recall the meaning of baptism—a lifelong surrender to the will of God. 

Robert Fulghum’s famous work, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten is filled with simple wisdom.  Precepts such as pay fair, put things back where you found them, and say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody are among a myriad of truisms included in Fulghum’s book.   Many of these precepts, I learned because of my kindergarten teacher, Sister Bridget.  Sr. Bridget was a member of the order of the Apostles of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (ASCJ).  The order began in Italy in 1894 and now exists all over the world.  The principle mission of the order is education. 

I learned a lot from Sister Bridget.  Most importantly, I learned who Jesus was.  One spring day our kindergarten class was taking a walk.  As we journeyed hand in hand, we came upon a large ferocious dog.  As the dog ran forward to attack us, Sister Bridget pushed us against a wall and stretched out her arms, using her body as a shield to protect us.  With courage and calm, she started to pray, and we followed.  Eventually, the dog calmed down and walked away.  I will never forget that day, nor will I forget the bravery and selflessness of Sister Bridget.

I remember and celebrate Sister Bridget and others especially during this Year for Consecrated Life declared by Pope Francis.  The word “consecrate” means to set aside or dedicate to a special, sacred purpose.  Men and women who live the consecrated life set aside worldly attachments and possessions so that they may freely give witness to Christ by serving others.  Most men and women religious profess vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. Pope Francis expressed his expectations for the yearlong observance hoping that consecrated men and women would be witnesses of communion, of joy and of the Gospel, going evermore to the peripheries to proclaim the Good News.  “I am counting on you to wake up the world, since the distinctive sign of consecrated life is prophecy,” he wrote.  “This is the priority that is needed right now.” Today as we commemorate the World Day of Prayer for Vocations, let us pray that many more men and women like Sister Bridget answer the call to show us the heart of Jesus.

Soothing Oil

As warmer weather arrives most of us will be putting on sun screen.  Most sun screens have oils in them that help strengthen and protect the skin from the sun’s harmful rays.  Oil is not only an ingredient in sun screen, it is part of many of the products we use every day—

   -in lotion

   -in make-up

  - in motor oil  

  - in various cooking oils and other foods.

Oil smoothes, protects, and strengthens.  Oil changes us.

Oil is also used in many of our sacramental rites, primarily in baptism.  The Oil of Catechumens is used before the baptism.  The Sacred Chrism Oil is used after the baptism.  Both of these oils, along with the Oil of the Sick, are made of olive oil that has been prayed over by the Archbishop at the annual Chrism Mass.

We use olive oil because of its rich history.  In Jesus’ time, olive oil was used as fuel, in cooking and as medicine.  The Ancient Greeks believed that the human race received the olive tree as a gift from Athena, the goddess of wisdom and strength.  The words used during the pre-baptismal anointing reflect this: 

We anoint you with the oil of salvation in the name of Christ our Savior; may he strengthen you with his power who lives and reigns forever and ever.

The Latin root of the word “salvation” is related to a group of words meaning “health” and “safety.”  In the ancient world, it was thought that catechumens were particularly susceptible to the powers of evil.  Anointing them all over with the Oil of Catechumens before they were immersed in the baptismal waters was seen as making them slippery enough to escape the grip of evil so that they could be joined in baptism to Christ who had already won the victory over evil.

After baptism, an anointing with the Sacred Chrism, olive oil scented with balsam, takes place.  This makes the newly baptized the anointed of the Lord, something St. Cyril of Jerusalem spoke of in an ancient homily to the neophytes:

Next, after removing your garments you were rubbed with exorcised oil from the hair of your head to your toes, and so you became sharers in Jesus Christ, who is the cultivated olive tree.

The Apostles' Creed

Every Sunday during the Easter Season we will be professing the Apostles’ Creed rather than the Nicene Creed.  The Apostles’ Creed is so called because legend has it that each of the Apostles contributed to its composition.  The Apostles’ Creed, which summarized the teaching of the Apostles, was originally a baptismal creed that was given to the Elect before they were baptized as part of their formation.  At Baptism, each line was put into the form of a question to which the Elect gave their assent, indicating their acceptance of the faith in which they were about to be baptized.   We still use this type of dialogue with those about to be baptized, as well as with the entire community on Easter Sunday.  

In the Apostles’ Creed, it says that Jesus descended into hell.  This might provoke questions such as “Why did Jesus go to hell?”  “Isn’t that the place where only bad people go?”  While this might be the popular definition or understanding of hell, it is the Biblical definition to which the creed is likely referring.  In Ephesians 4:9 it says that “He (Christ) had first descended into the lower regions of the earth.”  This lower region of the earth refers to a place where dead people, both bad and good, went to await judgment before the coming of Christ.  This place is sometimes referred to as Hades or the Netherworld.  Those “good” souls who had died were awaiting resurrection in this place.  They could not experience resurrection until Jesus had died and risen.  So the Apostles’ Creed professes our belief that Christ opened the possibility of resurrection not only for the “good” souls who were awaiting resurrection but for all of us.

The word “creed” comes from the Latin cor dare, meaning “to give one’s heart.”  Let us pray that as we profess the Apostles’ Creed we might give our heart to deeper faith and trust in the living God.

Palm Sunday

This weekend, we celebrate Palm Sunday of the Passion of the Lord, sometimes simply called Palm Sunday.  But the entire title tells us that we mark two events, the entrance of Jesus into Jerusalem and his passion.  The first part of today’s liturgy, the procession into the church with palms, commemorates the first Palm Sunday when Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey while crowds laid their cloaks in front of him and waved palm branches in celebration.  The earliest record of this liturgy comes from a famous traveler known as Egeria who visited the Holy Land in the late 4^th century and kept a diary of her experience.  

The liturgical practices she witnessed in 4^th century Palestine, we celebrate today. Egeria tells us that on Good Friday there was a reading of the passion and a veneration of the cross, much like our present-day worship on Good Friday.  Regarding the vigil of Easter, Egeria speaks of the account of the Resurrection being proclaimed and of children being baptized, as is our practice today.  Egeria’s account of the liturgical practices in Jerusalem was unique because the liturgies she wrote about took place at the sites where the events of Jesus’s passion, death and resurrection were believed to have happened. 

But whether we celebrate Holy Week in Jerusalem or in Alpharetta, marking the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus merely through the lens of the past is to miss the point.  Our call is not to reenact these events as if they were a historic play, but to enter into them in ways that make them present to us in the here and now.  One way to mark these past events in ways that bring meaning to us today would be to ask certain question such as: how have I had to walk the path of suffering and death?  What crosses am I being asked to embrace? And how will I hear the Resurrection story differently this year?

We will remember God this week by marking the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus.  But this is only because God first remembered us by sending us Jesus.  So whether we commemorate the events of the paschal mystery in the place where they actually took place or far away from there, we will encounter not a God of the past but the living God who chooses to be active among us today, here, now.