Tag: baptism

The 8th Day of Christmas

Happy New Year, Blessings for 2022!

Today the Church honors the 8th day of the Nativity, the circumcision of the Lord. The ritual also includes the naming of the child –Jesus. It is also a day on which we consider our own incorporation into the Church through Baptism. In both cases, today is a day celebrate our being made anew in Christ.

For the Christian, baptism has replaced circumcision as the entrance into the life of the church. Colossians 2:11-12 witnesses to this: “In him you were also circumcised with a circumcision not administered by hand, by stripping off the carnal body, with the circumcision of Christ. You were buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead.” One of the reasons for this, though not the only one, is that now Gentiles were entering the Church.

St. Paul says, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free person, there is not male and female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 3:28) Even in the Scripture, it was decided that Gentiles did not need to be circumcised. Circumcision was a limited entrance, it could only be for males. However, both circumcision and baptism did require a change of heart, a true repentance, a turning to the Lord. The prophet Jeremiah preached, “Be circumcised for the Lord, remove the foreskins of your hearts” (4:4).

This was echoed in the New Testament by St. Paul, “One is not a Jew outwardly. True circumcision is not outward, in the flesh. Rather, one is a Jew inwardly, and circumcision is of the heart, in the spirit, not the letter; his praise is not from human beings but from God” (Romans 2:28-29).

Circumcision was done of the eighth day, it was the beginning of a new creation, for God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh, the new creation begins on the eighth day. For the Christian, baptism, too, is the beginning of a new creation: “you should put away the old self of your former way of life, corrupted through deceitful desires, and be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and put on the new self, created in God’s way in righteousness and holiness of truth” (Ephesians 4:22-24). The Feast of the Circumcision, then, is in the middle of our passage from the Birth of the Lord to his Baptism in the Jordan. It is a time to renew our hearts, and begin to live in Christ.

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Infant fed at baptism

An Orthodox priest was captured by a professional photographer as he was feeding a baby girl while proclaiming the Gospel at the child’s baptism service at the Ascension of the Lord Church in Podu Olt, Brasov County, Romania.

Read the story here.

Sunday of the Man Born Blind

Hand of Jesus touching a blind man’s eye. Detail of “Two blind men cured.” Mosaic (6th century)

The story of the Man Born Blind is the third Sunday Gospel in Pascha about the mystery of baptism. This gospel is very clear, “Jesus spat on the ground and made clay with the saliva, and smeared the clay on his the blind man’s) eyes, and said to him, “Go wash in the Pool of Siloam” (which means Sent). So he went and washed, and came back able to see. (John 9:6-7)” The clay represents the anointing we receive at baptism, making us “Anointed Ones,” (Christs, or Christians) and the washing represents the washing in the water of baptism.

The blind man can then see, he is “enlightened,” the name the Church gives to baptism. Two observations: to be truly enlightened, we need humility. We need to know that only God can give us the vision we need. To do that, we cannot rely on our own “opinions,” we must hear his Word in the gospel, we must worship him with his people, we must be attentive to the voice of his shepherds in the teaching of the Church. If we believe only in ourselves, we risk condemnation, as Jesus told the Pharisees, “If you were blind, you would have no sin; but now you are saying, ‘We see,’ so your sin remains” (John 9:41). True knowledge comes only from the Holy Spirit, “But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and you know all things” (1 John 2:20).

The second observation is that in these three weeks, our Lord calls to baptism the most unlikely people: a friendless man lying lame by a pool, a shameless woman with serial husbands, and a blind man about whom the disciples ask, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” (John 9:2). Jesus responds, “Neither he nor his parents sinned; it is so that the works of God might be made visible through him (John 9:3), thus separating the wrath of God from the judgment of sin. God truly hates evil, which brings death and failure, but he loves the sinner with infinite divine love. If we suffer because of our sins, it is because that is the “wages” of sin (Romans 6:23). We see in these three Sundays that God is merciful and wishes the salvation of all. He calls us all to enlightenment in baptism, so that we can live in the Holy Spirit and profess with the formerly blind man, now enlightened, “I do believe, Lord!” (John 9:38).

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Bright Saturday

Today is the seventh day of Bright Week, the joyful celebration of the Resurrection of Christ. In today’s Apostolic Reading, St. Peter again proclaims, “The author of life you put to death, but God raised him from the dead; of this we are witnesses” (Acts 3:15). The gospel returns to the theme of baptism, for our life in Christ through the mystery of baptism is the beginning of our share in Christ’s eternal resurrection.

The gospel today begins, “After this, Jesus and his disciples went into the region of Judea, where he spent some time with them baptizing” (John 3:22). This is the only passage in the gospels that tells of Jesus baptizing, and he raised a theological problem: if Jesus baptized, would this be already the saving baptism in water and the Spirit. St. John, therefore, corrects himself in the next section of his gospel, “Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John (although Jesus himself was not baptizing, just his disciples), he left Judea and returned to Galilee” (John 4:1-3).

The icon posted here, from the Novgorod School, nonetheless depicts Jesus baptizing, a baptism that is life-giving. Whatever the meaning of John 3:22, as a people reborn in the Holy Trinity in the font of baptism, the life-giving baptism of water and the Spirit, today we seal the feast in the joy of our baptism, in which we died with Christ, so that we could rise with him in his resurrection” (Romans 6:3-4).

Meditation by Archpriest David Petras

The Flood and Baptism

One the key parts of the Great Fast is attending to Baptism. Do we realize the import of Baptism and its roots?

St. John Damascene lists eight baptisms:
1) the Flood, which was the eradication of sin;
2) the sea and the cloud, the baptism of Moses;
3) the baptism of the Law, in which every unclean person washed himself with water (Leviticus 14:8);
4) the baptism of John;
5) the baptism of our Lord;
6) the baptism of repentance and tears;
7) martyrdom, the baptism of blood;
8) the last baptism in hell, which is not saving, but which destroys the soul.

One common theme in all of this is that baptism is a fire, a death, a purification, as we say in the Creed, “I profess one baptism for the remission of sins.”

In this third week of the Great Fast, we remember the first of these, the flood. We are reminded that the Great Fast is a journey, but also a preparation for baptism. It is our weakness today that we do not evangelize people to come into the faith. We no longer see the connection between baptism and the passion and resurrection, as St. Paul did, and which is proclaimed in the Great Paschal Vigil, “Are you unaware that we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were indeed buried with him through baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might live in newness of life” (Romans 6:3-4). Our goal in Pascha is to renew our baptisms, renouncing the evil of Satan and committing ourselves again to Christ, so that “We know that our old self was crucified with him, so that our sinful body might be done away with, that we might no longer be in slavery to sin. (Romans 6:6)”

The flood is a foretelling of the true baptism of our Lord. In both the power of sin is destroyed. The ark represents the loving providence of God; it represents the strength of his grace, working in our human weakness; it represents our faith that life is found in God’s creative wisdom. We must hear last Sunday’s reading, “we must attend all the more to what we have heard, so that we may not be carried away. For if the word announced through angels proved firm, and every transgression and disobedience received its just recompense, how shall we escape if we ignore so great a salvation?” (Hebrews 2:1-3)

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