By DON FIER
The sacraments of initiation — Baptism, Confirmation, and the Holy Eucharist — can be seen as progressive stages in the spiritual and sacramental growth of Christians. By analogy, they are comparable to the origin, development, and nourishing of natural life.
As we saw last week, the faithful are reborn to share in the divine life through Baptism, are fortified and strengthened by Confirmation, and are nurtured and sustained by the food of eternal life, the Body and Blood of Christ, in the Eucharist. In ever-increasing measure, the People of God grow in grace and are perfected in charity through these foundational sacraments. By these three sacraments together, our initiation into Jesus, His life, and His Church are accomplished.
In his 1999 apostolic exhortation Ecclesia in America, Pope St. John Paul II elaborates on the vital unity of the three sacraments of initiation and explains how communion of life in the Church comes through them:
“Baptism is ‘the doorway to the spiritual life; it makes us members of Christ and draws us into the body of the Church.’ In Confirmation, the baptized ‘are joined more completely to the Church, they are enriched with special strength by the Holy Spirit and thus are more solemnly obliged to spread and defend the faith in word and deed as true witnesses of Christ.’ The journey of Christian initiation comes to completion and reaches its summit in the Eucharist, which fully incorporates the baptized into the Body of Christ” (n. 34).
The Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) now examines each of the seven sacraments, beginning with Baptism, in detail. It describes this first sacrament we receive as “the basis of the whole Christian life, the gateway to life in the Spirit (vitae spiritualis ianua), and the door which gives access to the other sacraments” (CCC, n. 1213).
According to the papal bull Exsultate Deo, promulgated by Pope Eugene IV in 1439 during the Council of Florence, “Holy baptism, which is the gateway to the spiritual life, holds the first place among all the sacraments; through it we are made members of Christ and of the body of the Church” (Denzinger, Enchiridion Symbolorum, n. 1314). So indispensable is this sacrament that the 1983 Code of Canon Law states that it is “necessary for salvation by actual reception or at least by desire” (canon 849).
The etymology of the word “baptism” comes from the Greek verb baptizein, which means “to plunge,” “to immerse,” or “to dip.” Moreover, as Fr. Kenneth Baker, SJ, explains in volume 3 of his Fundamentals of Catholicism (FoC-3), “in English ‘baptize’ has come to mean ‘purify’ or ‘cleanse’ and is usually associated with water in one way or another, since water is our principal purifying agent” (p. 194).
It is thus that the threefold immersion into and emergence out of water, which is the original and full sign of Baptism, “efficaciously signifies the descent into the tomb by the Christian who dies to sin with Christ in order to live a new life” (CCC, n. 628).
In other words, the “plunge” into water can be seen to symbolize the baptized person’s “burial into Christ’s death, from which he rises up by resurrection with him” (CCC, n. 1214). Through immersion into water he is cleansed of all stain of sin; with his emergence he is “a new creation” (2 Cor. 5:17), having been “born anew” (John 3:7) in the Spirit.
It is thus that St. Paul refers to Baptism as “the washing of regeneration and renewal in the Holy Spirit” (Titus 3:5). Here the Apostle to the Gentiles is using the term “regeneration” to indicate that “the washing of the body is an efficacious sign of the invisible work of the Spirit, whose action in the sacrament renews and renovates our souls with divine grace” (Ignatius Catholic Study Bible: New Testament, p. 407).
Therefore, as St. John the Evangelist proclaims, “Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God” (John 3:5).
The idea of purification through the sprinkling of water (or blood) in connection with the term “baptized” is clearly evident in Old Testament passages. In an excellent catechetical work entitled The Didache Series: The Sacraments (DS-S), it is pointed out that in the Septuagint translation of the Old Testament, “the Greek baptizein was used to translate the Hebrew word tabal, which was often used to describe various religious rites and actions . . . to designate a ritual act or ceremony associated with the sprinkling of sacrificial blood or water to purify a person or thing of uncleanliness or to deliver God’s people from evil” (p. 29).
For example, consider the instructions given under the Jewish law to those who were ritually unclean as a result of touching the dead: “A clean person shall take hyssop, and dip [baptize] it in the water, and sprinkle it upon the tent, and upon all the furnishings, and upon the persons who were there” (Num. 19:18).
A second example can be seen at the time of the Israelites’ exodus from Egypt: “Take a bunch of hyssop and dip [baptize] it in the blood which is in the basin, and touch the lintel and the two doorposts with the blood which is in the basin” (Exodus 12:22).
Baptism in the New Testament, then, can be associated with this meaning of purification, or the washing away of sins. As insightfully stated in The Didache Series, “Since water is used to cleanse oneself physically, its use in ritualistic practice allows the symbolic physical action to transcend into metaphysical reality” (DS-S, p. 29).
Various practices for applying water for sacramental Baptism have been approved and employed throughout the Church’s history. Besides threefold immersion (which seems to have been the most common up until about the 13th century), pouring water on the forehead and applying water by sprinkling are forms that have also been used — pouring water over the head of the person is the usual form used in the Roman Catholic Church.
Important to note, however, is that real water must be used and its application must be accompanied by the words of the Trinitarian formula. Indeed, “it is a matter of divine revelation . . . [that Christian Baptism] requires a flow of real water and a calling upon the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit” (FoC-3, p. 198). As dogmatically proclaimed by the Council of Trent: “If anyone says that true and natural water is not necessary in Baptism . . . let him be anathema” (Denzinger, n. 1615).
Before leaving the topic of the symbolic meaning of water, it would be good to reflect briefly on the fact that the physical effect of water is “like a two-edged sword: on the one hand it is life-giving and fruitful; on the other hand, it is a destructive force that can drown out all life” (Tim Gray, Sacraments in Scripture, p. 35).
As a preview to next week’s topic, consider the great flood in the time of Noah. The forty-day deluge destroyed sinners, yet saved Noah and his family. Likewise, the parting of the waters of the Red Sea served to wipe out Pharaoh’s army and at the same time save the Israelites. In sacramental Baptism, water signifies both death to sin and rebirth to new life in Christ.
“The one baptized,” says Fr. John A. Hardon, SJ, “is plunged into water to symbolize being buried into Christ’s death and then rising up a new creature” (The Faith, p. 111).
A Bath Of Rebirth
Citing Early Church Fathers such as St. Justin Martyr and St. Gregory of Nazianzus, the Catechism now specifies several names which have been associated with the Sacrament of Baptism. Each name, in turn, describes a different effect that the sacrament has upon the recipient: “gift, grace, anointing, enlightenment, garment of immortality, bath of rebirth, seal, and most precious gift” (CCC, n. 1216).
Baptism is a gift — a most precious gift — because the grace which is conferred cannot be earned or merited by one’s own efforts, but is freely and gratuitously bestowed by an all-loving and merciful God.
It is a grace because it bestows on the baptized the divine life of God and makes him His adopted child and an heir; an anointing because it makes the baptized person a participant in the kingly, priestly, and prophetic mission of Jesus Christ; an enlightenment because those who have been prepared for Baptism through catechetical instruction are enlightened in their understanding of the faith; a garment of immortality because the recipient puts on Jesus Christ; a bath of rebirth because it not only cleanses one of the guilt of all sin, both original and actual, but also remits all punishment due to sin; and a seal because it imprints upon the soul an indelible mark designating that the baptized person belongs to Christ (cf. CCC, nn. 1214-1216; cf. DS-S, p. 32).
As alluded to earlier, our examination of Baptism will continue next week with a more in-depth exposition of several Old Covenant prefigurations of the sacrament.
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(Don Fier serves on the board of directors for The Catholic Servant, a Minneapolis-based monthly publication. He and his wife are the parents of seven children. Fier is a 2009 graduate of Ave Maria University’s Institute for Pastoral Theology. He is doing research for writing a definitive biography of Fr. John A. Hardon, SJ.)
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