Baptism as passport to Christian journey

National Catholic Reporter, Dec 13, 1996 by Dawn Gibeau

He explained, for instance, that Christmas, rather than being about baby Jesus, is about "our baptismal birth in the adult Christ as he is born anew in us through the Spirit, who brings the glad tidings of salvation now. Easter and Pentecost are about our death and resurrection in Christ and the gift of the Spirit.... Advent is about our hope for fulfillment in Christ"

Within this context, he suggested that such seasons as Pentecost, Epiphany and Advent are as appropriate as Easter for full celebration of Christian initiation. He also recommended paying attention to the entire liturgical year as a key for catechesis, preaching and teaching about Christians' identity as the body of Christ.

Baptismal spirituality additionally "invites us to a renewed sense of ministry in the life of the church" in which, by water and the Holy Spirit, all are ordained as priests, "initiated into that royal, prophetic and communal priesthood of the baptized." He said every presbyter and bishop is a priestly person, but not every priestly person is a presbyter or bishop. "Becoming a Christian and becoming a priestly being are not merely correlative processes, they are one and the same."

That reality suggests collaborative ministry between ordained and lay people, he said.

Baptismal spirituality, moreover, "can be nothing other than an ecumenical spirituality," he said. Through baptism, "we already belong to the same church, unless Christ himself is divided. We belong to the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church of Jesus Christ."

He said he is "convinced that baptismal unity in the one faith far outweighs any other distinctions, whether cultural, social, sexual, age-related or ecclesial. The issue is not why is the church divided. The issue is, since the church is united by baptism, how are we going to express that?"

Finally, recovery of baptismal spirituality calls us to "a life of continual conversion and reconversion, a life of death and resurrection, a continual claiming of the new birth," he said.

"Not only can we go home again," he insisted, "we must go home again. Our very identity, our very place in the world depends on it." By returning home to baptism, he said, paraphrasing T.S. Eliot, "We do arrive where we started and we do come to know that gracious place, perhaps for the very first time."