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(Veni Sancte Spiritus…)
Crossing the Red Sea - Grace
“You know well enough that we who were taken up into
Christ by Baptism have been taken up, all of us, into His death. In our Baptism we have been buried with Him,
died like Him, that so, just as Christ was raised up by His Father’s power from
the dead, we too might live and move in a new kind of existence.” (Romans 6: 3,4)
My dear sisters in Christ,
There has been a constant
tradition in the Christian Church to associate Baptism with the Israelite’s
passage through the Red Sea. It is so
old that the association was made before the Gospel was written down. With such a venerable example left by the
primitive Church for our edification, we do well if we consider Baptism and its
effects in terms of the journey the Christian soul must undertake in going from
a state of enmity toward God all the way along to full Christian maturity or
holiness. The latter can be compared to
our gaining full possession of our souls in peace, a kind of entering into a
Promised Land. We haven’t said so
explicitly, but we are beginning to do what we said we would the night before
last: make an event of the journey of
the Children of Israel under Moses the point of departure for a discussion of
an analogous event in our journey to Spiritual Perfection. You can gather this from what we have said
in our previous conference concerning the struggle between nature and grace. We have presented nature as that aspect of
our being that would have us turn in upon ourselves, enclose ourselves in a
kind of shell, and direct all our efforts to the building up and establishment
of the self in an isolated splendor, needing no one or nothing else. And we have presented grace as that call and
invitation of God, which seeks to break down the wall of self-containment and
self-sufficiency and direct ourselves outwardly to the worship and service of
the living God. In fact, we have to
bring in Baptism because even after
grace has triumphed in us over nature, we find ourselves no better off than
Moses and the Israelites once they finally took leave of their homes in Egypt
and set out in a body for the Egyptian border.
The Israelites, you will
remember, found themselves effectively trapped within Egypt, and therefore
still at the mercy of Pharaoh, by the Red Sea.
And it was not long before Pharaoh repented of having allowed them to
depart and he came swiftly in pursuit of them.
So unless the Lord God had Himself intervened to bring them out with
a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, they
would soon have been enslaved and oppressed again under Pharaoh’s tyranny. So also it is in the case of a Christian who
has finally surrendered to grace. He
has departed with all the power of his will from a life of slavery to self and
has oriented himself toward the worship and service of the living God. But alas, he too finds himself trapped. He cannot effectively get beyond the boundaries
of his own nature. He remains there,
subject to the further assaults of nature, and were it not for God Himself, who
comes to deliver him and open a way whereby he is enabled to escape, he would
soon find himself a slave to self once more.
That the human person
cannot transcend itself – for that would be the equivalent of a man lifting
himself up by his bootstraps – is vividly suggested by two incidents that
accompanied their departure. The first
is the fact that the Egyptians were so pleased to see them go that they pressed
upon them all their valuables. Gold and
silver, precious stones, jewelry, rich fabrics and brocades, spices, precious
ointments, valuable skins and furs, all were given to the Israelites in order
to hasten their departure. They left,
then considerably enriched. And the
second fact is noted in a brief remark made by the sacred author to the effect
that none among the Israelites were ill or infirm at the time of their
departure. They were, every one of
them, young and old, able to leave Egypt under their own power. This was the Lord’s way of enriching them. And despite the fact that they were enriched
both in material possessions and in health, they remained hemmed in. Even though it is true, therefore, that
grace enriches us when we surrender to it, particularly in regard to psychic or
mental health, and even when, because of an enriched nature we are able to
acquire a goodly share of material goods and a goodly measure of security, we
cannot get beyond ourselves, we cannot break through the wall of selfishness
preventing us from going out to where God is.
No, the Lord God Himself is obliged to rescue us.
The early Christians were
utterly amazed at the miraculous transformation brought about in a person in
virtue of the Sacrament of Baptism.
They spoke of it as bringing about a death and a rising up to a new
life. It was like a new creation. The symbol of the waters of Baptism reminded
them of the primeval chaos, over which the spirit of God moved to draw life out
of it. The Catechumen disappeared
beneath the waters of Baptism in early times and was dissolved, so to
speak. What he was, he ceased to be,
and when he arose again from its depths he was a new creature called into being
by the power of the Holy Spirit. It was
regeneration and renewal. He was born
again of water and the Holy Spirit.
When the Israelites came
up on dry land on the far side of the Red Sea, a complete break with their past
mode of existence had been achieved.
The same is true of the Christian who has just been baptized. For he is now no longer estranged from
God. He is no longer a child of wrath;
he is God’s personal friend. He is, in
fact, much more than that, He is God’s child.
He has entered into a new relationship therefore, and the life in which
He participates is the life of God Himself.
The change of status brought
about in Baptism is far-reaching in its consequences. It is said to bestow a character upon our souls. That is a striking way of saying a Christian
is a marked man. Of course, we cannot imagine that our ‘personality’ or
our being is in any way ‘branded’ in the physical sense. Yet we do know that the soul of a Christian
has something about it, which identifies it, at least in the sight of God and
of other pure spirits. If nothing else,
we must say that the Christian is the bearer of a title of certain divine
goods, and at the same time has become subject to certain obligations of a
divine nature. The mark with which he
is now sealed shows that he has been seized upon by Christ and has been
incorporated into Him. For this reason
he enjoys new rights and is bound by new duties. But we are getting ahead of ourselves. The first effect of Baptism is that it removes original sin. This is the chief reason for which Jesus
gave us baptism. Original sin is the
condition of being turned away from God, of having an impenetrable wall around
us to close us in upon ourselves and to shut God out. Baptism, then, achieves reconciliation between God and ourselves
and turns us back toward Him. Baptism
opens us out to Him, both to give and to receive. Baptism established the groundwork or the basis for us to enter
into personal relations with Him.
Hence, it removes the eternal punishment due to original sin and opens
to us the gates of Heaven. But really,
the state of being eternally at enmity with God is in itself eternal
punishment, for the fact of estrangement from God is a Hell. It is the Hell. And of course, the state of being reconciled
to God is to have possession of Heaven.
It is to have the gates of Heaven standing open to us. It is only because of the condition of our
present life in which we are subject to change that we are not capable of
feeling and knowing by experience and actual sufferings of Hell and the actual
joys, on the other hand, of Heaven.
Because we are children of
God by adoption through Baptism we are said to be the brothers and sisters of
Christ, and thus the heirs of Heaven.
We can have some idea of what it means to have Christ as a brother, but
we can’t get a good idea of what it means to be an ‘heir’ of Heaven. We know what an heir of a human fortune is,
but this notion does not apply well to the idea of heaven. After all, an heir is one who comes into
complete personal exclusive possession of an estate, or part of an estate, upon
the death of the one whose heir he is.
But God our Father will never die, and so the idea of some day getting
exclusive possession of some part of heaven is meaningless in this connection,
even though Christ did say that in heaven there are many mansions, and that He
was going to prepare a place for us. So
we are forced to say that Baptism makes us heirs forever, because if God were
to die, we would cease being heirs, we would come into possession, we would be
proprietors. (By way of parentheses we
can say that the claim “God is Dead” implies that each of us who is an heir –
or was – of heaven has to begin playing God in the world. And this is really exactly what the
proponents of this thesis are saying.
In response, we Christians have to admit that since Christ’s death,
Resurrection and Ascension, we have been obliged to play, that is, to be
Christs in the world.) Thus it follows
that we must say that being an heir of heaven is like a young person being an
heir to a rich family. He cannot say
that he owns outright his father’s treasures, but he does know that they are for
him. He knows that any need of his,
even any desire of his can be satisfied out of those treasures. He knows that out of those treasures he can
use not only what he requires for himself to enable him to be himself,
to be utterly free in following the promptings of his heart, but also he has
what he needs to satisfy the desires of his closest friends. What youngster does not find his greatest
delight in sharing with his best buddy, in bringing him home to live at his
house exactly as he does himself? What
I am driving at, therefore, is this:
because we have been changed into heirs of heaven, the riches of God are
ours. That is, they are for
us. That means that God’s wisdom; His
power, His love, His mercy, His justice and all that He is and has are there
for us to draw upon as we need them and as we desire them. No matter what it is we want, provided it is
something real, that is, not a contradiction of reality, we do have in God and
in His riches the means to obtain it.
We know, too, that there is infinitely more than we are able to use
personally. We have far far more than
we need to supply for all the needs of our dear ones. This all by itself is a remarkable illustration of the completely
new status we have achieved by our Baptism.
Before it, we were empty, naked and poor.
We have already mentioned
that Baptism opens us up to communion with God in virtue of the personal
relationship it establishes between us.
This too enters into the fact that we are the ‘heirs’ of God. We are made the heirs to the mind and heart
of God. We enter into a family that
boasts of a history and traditions.
There is in particular a family spirit and a family likeness. As heirs of Heaven we are heirs to all
that. Thus there are definite standards
we are obliged to live up to. It is
with an eye to all these that we, as heirs, are to be educated. We are expected to uphold and preserve the
family character. This, too, helps us
to see the amazing difference that exists between what we were before Baptism
and what we are now, after Baptism. It
is in this regard that we see what serious obligations come to us with
Baptism. And yet, far from diminishing
our status as human beings, the new frame of mind, the new family spirit we
share confers upon us a dignity that is made manifest by the way of life we are
thus obliged to live.
But there is still more to
the radical transformation that is achieved by Baptism. St. Peter, in his first letter calls the
Christian communities a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a consecrated
nation.
Profound changes are implied in all these expressions. We are a chosen, that is, a gathered race. The notion
of race implies certain distinctive features that typify the members of the
race. We speak of the White, the Black,
the Yellow, the Brown, and the Red races of men. Baptism supersedes these distinctions. We can no longer, as Christians say that we are not of the same
race of every other human being. We are
now so closely related to every baptized person that we are his brothers and
sisters. Because we now share the same
life – a participation of God’s own life -, because we are heirs to the same
treasures and the same family spirit, all distinctions of race and national
origin have been done away with. By that
I mean that they should not be allowed to cause division and separation among
us.
We are a royal priesthood. This means that Baptism makes a person a
mediator between God and his fellow man.
We are a royal priesthood in that this role of mediation is associated
with the government of society. In
general, a priest is one who offers sacrifice.
In doing so he gives official, public recognition of the dependence of
the community upon its God, and expresses their willing acceptance of their
dependence as well as their determination to honor it in all respects. A priest who is such in virtue of being a
Christian has to do the same, except that his sacrifice recognizes, accepts and
determines to actualize the new relationship of children and heirs to the true
God. Our concept of hierarchical
priesthood has changed somewhat now.
Instead of seeing the priest as representative of the community of
worshipers, we see him as part of the worshipping community. As presider, which is what he is ordained to be, his presence guarantees that the
sacrifice does become a true and valid sacrifice. Well, we as Christians are sent into this world of time in order
to give expression to the relation of all the visible creation to God, to
express the entire human race’s acceptance of it, and to give evidence of our
determination to accept the relationship wholeheartedly. And also, as mediators between God and the
rest of society, we do, as members of a royal Priesthood, offer the gifts of
secular society to God, and bring to secular society the gifts of God, namely,
His treasures: power, wisdom, love, mercy, etc., and with all these, His Heart
and Mind. How different is this state
from that which was ours before Baptism, when we were so enslaved by nature we
just couldn’t open ourselves upward and outward. We could only close in upon ourselves and be for
ourselves. With Baptism, we are able to
open ourselves not only to God, but also to others. This is reflected in the expression, ‘a consecrated’
nation.
A thing is consecrated when it is set aside for sacred uses only. Every Christian is now set aside and
dedicated exclusively to what is sacred, i.e., to what pertains to God. Obviously, this does not say that a
Christian is forbidden to lead a normal life.
What it means is that a Christian is able to make a normal life
something sacred and to direct it to God.
Our priesthood comes from the fact that Baptism takes us into Christ and
Christ takes us into God the Father.
Hence, by functioning as priests in the world and on behalf of the world
all things are gathered unto Christ and through Him unto God, also. Therefore, not only does Baptism destroy the
wall which kept us personally shut off from God, it also, in making us priests,
breaks down the wall which has kept God out of human society.
There is still another
expression, which helps us to see the tremendous difference between what we
were before Baptism and what we are now.
We are now the Temples of God. The Holy Trinity dwells within us. Previously we were hateful to God. That is, we were diametrically opposed to
all that God is and stands for. As
children of wrath, slaves of corrupt nature, we were incompatible with God. He couldn’t possibly be present to us as a
Person. Sure, He is present to
everything and to everyone as creator and preserver. In that regard he is present to us in the same way as an inventor
is present to a device he has designed and created and maintains. There could be no communication on the level
of knowledge and love between God and His creatures. But now God is so close to us that He is said to dwell in us. He
feels at home inhabiting our hearts and minds.
And perhaps the reason why we are called Temples and not just dwelling places for God is to illustrate the truth that He now finds
us precious and sacred and noble and dignified, and really, a place wherein He
receives the homage and reverence of all creation. We are, after all, the priests of the universe in so far as we
participate in all the orders of creation:
mineral, vegetable, animal and spiritual. Our very nature as human is a kind of ordination to the natural
priesthood on behalf of all creation.
But even this beautiful concept of being a Temple of God does not do
justice to the reality. For we still
don’t think of inhabitants of a dwelling as entering into communion and
dialogue with the four walls that surround them. We do know that the Holy Trinity does enter into communion with
us.
But whether we think of
our souls as dwelling places for God or not, He has to be present there in a
special way because He alone is able to achieve and sustain the transformation
that makes us His children and heirs.
We need His presence within us to prompt us and to stimulate and to
enable us to act in a manner befitting this new dignity of ours. Our entire being has been elevated to the
supernatural sphere of being, the sphere of being, the world, in other words,
that is inhabited by God Himself. And
so God’s presence within us is a transforming presence. It is an active presence that gives an
entirely new orientation to our human faculties. Before Baptism, i.e., before the Holy Spirit took up His
transforming presence within us, all the faculties of our nature were really
turned toward God; now they are turned to Him in a higher way. Previously our minds were turned to Him in
that we all have a natural thirst for truth.
But this remains something impersonal.
Now we are turned toward Him in so far as He is a truth, which
transcends naturally discoverable truth, and furthermore, as a Person. Our hearts
were previously turned toward goodness in so far as it is discoverable upon
earth, and then only in human persons.
Now we are turned toward God as supremely lovable and good, and as a
Person to whom we have access. In
virtue of Baptism our hearts are oriented toward the redemptive, healing
elevating, transforming love, which is God.
So now we find that all our natural powers and appetites have been
changed by Baptism. The new
relationship with God we enjoy; the new way of opening up to Him in communion
and dialogue have had an ennobling effect upon the normal, natural play of the
human, the moral virtues, and have given them a broader, higher, in a word, a
divine scope for their activity.
And so, my dear brothers
and sisters, we can bring this conference to an end by remarking that Baptism,
like all the Sacraments, is a two-way street. As in every other Sacrament,
this is our way of encountering Christ and submitting ourselves to His power to
save us and to sanctify us. It is our
way of allowing Him to draw us into Himself.
In that we freely approach Baptism or freely ratify it, we are being
fully human and fully responsible for all that we allow Jesus to accomplish
within us. So really, it is our joint
action that gets us to the other side.
He opens the way because we ask Him to fulfill His promise to do so, and
then we are the ones who walk over to the other side, as happened at the Red
Sea.
And so, even though the
struggle between Nature and Grace does persist in us after our Baptism, it is
of a totally different kind. It is one
thing to conquer an enemy by either escaping his influence or tying him up so
he cannot hurt us. It is something completely
different to conquer him by transforming him into an ally and a friend. The struggle we are engaged in after Baptism
is to transform nature into an ally, one that is no longer incompatible with
God and with Christ and with the divine life that we participate in.
There is in our human
nature a built-in resistance to a share in the life of God, and even though our
being is radically transformed, that is, transformed at the roots, the change
in us is not so extensive that we immediately begin to exhibit the full
maturity of the Christian life we call holiness. At Baptism, the change is seminal, that is, divine life is
planted within us as a seed is planted in the ground. The kingdom of Heaven is like a grain of mustard seed, said Jesus.
It must draw all of our human nature, the ground of our being into
itself to form a fully developed, perfect Christian.
The Israelites spent 40
years in the desert after crossing the Red Sea before they reached, or rather,
were able to gain entrance to, the Promised Land. But God was always with them, making good on the promises implicitly
contained in that first great miracle of the Crossing. We can expect to spend a
long time in the no-man’s land between being enslaved to nature and perfect
holiness. But in our case, too, God
will be faithful to the promises contained in the great miracle, which is our
regeneration to a new life in Baptism.
We can’t afford to lose heart.
In patience we shall possess our souls.
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