In the second of our Advent series on the Sacraments, Fr Tom looked at the Christian Initiation Sacraments of Baptism and Confirmation this morning.
Preaching at the Priory Church at 11am he said:
In the sermon at his enthronement the new Archbishop of Wales declared that young people today would “high-five the prophet Job, and queue for selfies with Jesus”. The modern craze for selfies, may leave you cold, but there is an element whereby it speaks of the strong desire in our culture for a proof of belonging. What is a selfie if not a desire to prove one’s involvement or connection to something? It may be a group, a place, or a person. A shared identity. The Tenovus choir who performed here on Friday took a choir selfie: an expression of their belonging one with another, united by their struggle against cancer.
We may be a church made up of very diverse people. Perhaps we may feel we share very little in common, but one thing which we do all have in common as Christians is our identity in Christ in our baptism. Baptism speaks to us of beginning, believing and belonging. St John Paul II once surprised an interviewer when they asked what was the most important day in his life. He replied, not the day he became Pope, or his consecration as a bishop, but the day of his baptism: the day he became a Christian.
We may not remember our baptism, yet that day is the day we became associated with Jesus. Our selfie which says ‘i begin my life with Christ’ ‘I believe in Jesus Christ’ ‘I belong to Jesus Christ’.
Firstly ‘beginning’. Our gospel today starts ‘the beginning of the Good news of Jesus Christ’ according to Mark and within the first paragraph we encounter two kinds of baptism: The baptism of John for repentance and the forgiveness of sins, and the promise of the coming baptism of Jesus who will initiate us into his body, his belonging, with the baptism of the Holy Spirit.
The Christian Church inhabits a world of sacraments and symbols through which it seeks to embody and live out Christ’s saving mission on earth.
In his writings on the sacraments the bishop and monk Dom Hervé Courau reminds the reader that in the text of the Gloria in excelsis from the Mass Christians acclaim ‘Tu solus sanctus – God alone is holy. We, on the other hand’ he says, ‘can only be “made holy”.
Christians are called to journey towards holiness against the backdrop of a fallen creation, sharing in God’s holiness and in doing so to sanctify fallen creation through sharing in the redemptive grace of God expressed once and for all on the cross. This call to holiness is expressed in the first letter of Peter, when he writes:
‘Like obedient children, do not be conformed to the desires that you formerly had in ignorance. Instead, as he who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in all your conduct; for it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.”’
The word ‘holy’ in this context comes from the Greek ‘αγιος’ meaning ‘devoted to [God]’. Looking at the root of the word in English ‘holiness’ contains the connotation of ‘wholeness’ or ‘completion’, implying that the completion or redemption of the created order is that it be sanctified through being brought into relationship with God. As human beings, we are incomplete without God. And how does God choose to bring about that completion, but through his Son, and his Son’s body on earth, as we sing in the hymn ‘Love divine’: ‘finish then thy new creation, pure and spotless let us be, let us see thy great salvation lovingly restored in thee.’
1 Peter goes on to reveal that this deliberate process of sanctification will be administered by a ‘chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people’ to the end that ‘you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvellous light.’ The means by which God redeems creation for all times and peoples is through the atonement of Calvary, yet as a perpetuation of this saving action he chooses to use the medium of a priestly people, Christ’s Body the Church, to sanctify the fallen creation.
In the final verses of Matthew’s Gospel Jesus commissions the beginnings of this priestly people in the sending out of his disciples:
‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit…’
From this quotation it is possible to ascertain that the Church is in itself a medium for God’s saving work as a sacramental extension of Christ’s incarnation, and it is charged with the continuing sanctification (making holy) of creation as a part of salvation through the sacraments. Inviting them to that new beginning.
Believing:
The catechism of the Roman Catholic Church addresses the place of belief in the sacraments by stating:
‘Sacraments are not magic. A Sacrament is effective of itself, however, to be fruitful it must be accepted in faith. Sacraments not only presuppose faith, they also strengthen it and give expression to it.’
This can seem to be something of a conflicting statement. How can a Sacrament be both effective of itself but at the same time dependent upon the acceptance of faith? It is in essence like the gift of a seed which contains all that is necessary to grow a fruit tree. The fruit, like the inward invisible grace of the sacrament, is not in evidence as a seed. Indeed, the seed may look decidedly simple and unpromising, dead even. However, in order to benefit from the inner grace, it is necessary to nurture that seed in order that the expression of the implicit inner grace may become explicit, and display the benefits of its fruit. So, it is that the seed of the sacraments exist within the context of the faith community in the fertile field of the Church. In Matthew 19 Jesus himself explores the gift of faith using the imagery of seed through the parable of the sower.
Therefore, believing cannot truly flourish without the third point: Belonging. The Christian Community is the propagator or greenhouse. The environment in which the seed of faith must be nurtured, grow and lead to blossoming and fruitfulness. That’s one of the reasons parents and godparents have such an important role in the baptism and nurturing of a child. They are the fertiliser you pack around that tiny seed to give it everything it needs to spring up.
However Christian initiation extends beyond baptism. Christian initiation is about what we experience every time we repent. Every time we turn back to Christ, every time we seek to die to ourselves and become alive to God, as we did at the beginning of this Eucharist. Human beings who have fallen from grace are able access that grace of continual conversion to God’s will, made possible to us in the sacraments. We move away from the infertile desert of our sins, and back to the fertile nursery of Christ’s body.
He preached in the snow
In his book ‘A Key to the Doctrine of the Eucharist’ Abbot Anscar Vonier comments on this relationship between sacramental grace and faith:
“The power of the sacraments could never be dissociated from the power of faith…A sacrament is always an external sign witnessing to that more recondite quality of the soul, the faith that justifies man by bringing him into contact with Christ.”
Whilst all human beings fall into sin both before and after Christian initiation God has ensured that the means of regaining that grace is available to all in the source and summit of Christian life: The Eucharist, and the Eucharistic body of Christ through which we become members in our baptism. So, therefore Beginning, believing and belonging are not a series of events which come one after another, but are bound together: three actions interdependent upon one another and bound up in the character of baptism.
When people take a selfie which says something about who they are, they don’t just keep it to themselves. They fill the internet with them! Social media is all about telling people ‘this is who i chose to be’ ‘this is me with my friends’ ‘this is me with a celebrity’. Where i eat, what i like, my politics. So when was the last time you shared your most important association: Your baptism? Your Jesus selfie?
Not only that but Jesus sends his followers out to make disciples of all nations baptising them in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. When was the last time you encouraged someone to queue for their Jesus selfie? It’s not just the job of the clergy.
Although baptism is a sacrament only received once in life, Christians renew their baptismal vows; their beginning, believing, and belonging in a perpetual cycle of grace. In this Eucharist, we have repented of our sins, beginning again with God. We have recognised that God alone is Holy, the one to whom we belong in the words of the Gloria. In a moment, we will renew our belief in the words of the creed, and we will receive Christ, becoming his body, belonging to him, in Holy Communion. In doing so we are living out our baptismal faith, not as something which happened to us a long time ago, but as a perennial gift of God’s grace through the sacraments: An invitation to beginning our relationship with Christ, believing in him, and belonging to him, which we in turn must extend to all people. The right of all people to have their Jesus selfie and to belong to him.
The rest of the series;
- December 3: Bishop Dominic Walker OGS DL on Healing
- December 17: Bishop Roger Jupp (Superior-General of the Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament) on The Holy Eucharist
- December 24: Bishop of Monmouth (The Church in Wales Ministry Bishop) on Ordination
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Details of services for the 12 Days of Christmas & Epiphany
St Mary's Priory Church, Abergavenny 