Baptism
2 Kgs 4:8-11, 14-16a; Ps 89:2-3, 16-17, 18-19; Rom 6:3-4, 8-11; Mt 10:37-42
A few years after my ordination, I was sent to the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., to pursue further studies in Scripture. I had the privilege of serving at St. Anthony Parish in the Brookland neighborhood, near CUA.
One of my first baptisms at St. Anthony took place during a Sunday Mass. I carefully poured a gentle stream of water over the baby’s forehead, baptizing “in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.”
The family was gathered around the font, and I noticed that a woman who was clearly the matriarch of the family was eyeing me closely with each pour. She smiled kindly but clearly had something on her mind.
When I finished, she loudly exclaimed: “Drown him, pastor! Drown him! Drown him now!” Brushing past my shocked look, she quickly took the baby boy from its mother’s arms and proceeded to fully plunge him under the water three times.
At that point she held him up before the congregation, who erupted into loud applause as the choir burst into an electric rendition of “This Little Light of Mine.”
It would be no exaggeration to say that I was transformed at that Mass. Although I had aced all my sacramental theology classes in seminary, on that day I learned what baptism truly means.
What that grandmother knew well, and what I technically knew, but hadn’t fully appreciated, was that the primary symbolism of the water at baptism is not to represent an agent of cleansing (though it certainly represents that), but an agent of death.
The baptismal candidate is meant to be plunged under the water and symbolically drowned. No one ever drowned by having a trickle of water run off their forehead. This symbolism is so powerful that some baptismal fonts in the early church were literally in the shape of a coffin. The meaning could not be stated more starkly.
The theology behind this symbolism is largely supplied by Paul’s writings, and this week’s passage from his letter to the Romans provides an excellent example. When he states that, via baptism, we enter into Christ’s death, he is acknowledging that Christians are called to let go of whatever is attaching them to a way of life that conflicts with the self-sacrificial love of Christ. Paul learned this directly when he was blinded on the road to Damascus and chose to forsake his mission of persecuting Jesus’ disciples. That mission had likely defined his identity and his livelihood. To let that go was indeed a dying to self.
Jesus called forth this behavior from his disciples on many occasions. For example: telling wealthy people to let go of the desire to only fraternize with their peers (Lk 14:13); inviting Peter to abandon the nets of his identity as a fisherman (Mk 1:17); calling Zacchaeus to “come down” to him and thus abandon his ways as a dishonest tax collector (Lk 19:5), and so forth.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus declares that even our family, precious though it may be, should not hold us back from following him, should there ever be a tension between the two.
All of this dying to self, of course, is so that new life may emerge. The one who comes up from the baptismal waters is truly a “new creation.” And he or she should be expected to live accordingly.
What does that look like? Some prime examples include living the beatitudes or striving to love others as Christ loved us. Doing that might mean letting go of a selfish relationship or following a career path for less money but greater moral clarity. “Dying to self” sounds nice, but it can be daunting and frightening.
I am forever indebted to that grandmother in Washington from so many years ago. As that little baby grew up, he surely didn’t remember his dying beneath the waters of baptism, but he didn’t need to. I have no doubt whatsoever that he was blessed with a family that expected him to live as one of Christ’s new creations, striving to love God and his neighbors. I feel certain that they never let him forget that extraordinary identity.