Ritual And Reality - Baptism
When we talk about the
baptism of the Lord, what immediately comes to mind is a church baptism –
typically a baby, parents and godparents.
The word baptism hears “to
dip, immerse in water”. When St. John was baptizing people in the river, he was
using the water as a symbol of cleansing. Those willing to leave behind their
old lives, repenting of their offenses against God, could now formally recommit
themselves to God and they could “see” their sins being washed away down
stream. No, of course, they did
not literally “see” their sins floating away down the river or dissolving in the
water. But the ritual was very
important.
Rituals seek to communicate
what sometimes words cannot. We remember the event of a ritual. It helps us place
something that is personally important for our interior lives, within the
timeframe and history of our public life.
For any ritual to be
authentic, what is being communicated visibly must be genuinely happening
invisibly within our heart and souls.
That’s the difference between a ritual and a performance. In a simple performance, we learn our
lines, we understand our role and do what we are expected. And after the
performance is over we go back to the same type of life we were living before
the play.
However, when we perform a ritual,
we seek to express publicly through our actions, what is happening invisibly
to our souls. Whether we can understand it or not, our senses tell us that the
ritual communicates something that is authentic, meaningful, sacred.
Christ was sinless. He did
not need to have his sins washed away. He didn't have any. Why then was be baptized? Did he just
go through all the motions? Was it just a performance? No.
Consider the crowds of
people who came to the waters seeking to turn away from sin and wanting to
express this by having their sins symbolically washed away. Consider that this was taking place in
the desert, and that the villages upstream were using this river for water, for
washing, for laundry and also for waste disposal. Now you are downstream. What color would that water be when
it reached the desert? How clean would it be? Now consider that this water was being used to symbolically
wash away sins. Not only at this stage was the river unhygienic, but also because
John was using it to baptize, the water was symbolically polluted with sins,
the sins of the whole world.
Now consider what Christ
does. The Son of God, the embodiment of all purity and innocence, freely steps
into, immerses himself into the dark and murky waters of our sins – he is
literally “up to his neck in it!”.
In order to save us from
our sins, Christ dives into the deadly waters to free us, to takes upon himself
all the sins of the world, so that he would make safe the waters for us and we
can emerge alive.
Unlike our own baptism
which, when you think about it, is accomplished almost in an instant – we could
say it happened in a “splash”, Christ’s baptism is a tsunami - it’s powerful,
it generates waves that spill out in every direction through time and history,
into the past, the present and to the future and beyond – a shockwave that
rattles even heaven itself!
A Christian is someone who
has been immersed with Christ into his life, death and resurrection. This is
ritually communicated through our baptism. But the waters of baptism can become stagnant and foul. For this reason, when we turn back to
God, our heavenly Father sends his Holy Spirit to breath upon the dark and deep
waters of our souls, stirring our heart to repentance. Through the sacrament of Confession,
Christ in his love and mercy, filters out our sins and infuses oxygen once
again into the waters of our baptism.
Keep the waters of baptism
fresh, clean and full of life.
Express this with the simple ritual of blessing yourself with holy water
every time you enter the church.
Fill up a bottle with holy water from the baptismal font and mark it as
such. Every time you feel vulnerable to sin use it. Have it close by when you are in danger. Bless yourself with
it before you close your eyes into the darkness of sleep.
Water is the most natural of all the
elements, used by God himself in a ritual to communicate the most supernatural
gift he offers us, the cleansing of our sins and the abundance of life in
abundance. With God’s grace, let us keep this precious and life-giving gift
fresh in our lives, free from the pollution of sin and safe from the decay of
death and darkness.
