Sacraments of the Gospel
Between Sunday and Monday, we have the privilege to witness the beautiful connection between Savina’s baptism at the 10:15 service and the funeral mass for Tom Newsome on Monday afternoon. At a glance, they reflect the beginning and end of life: birth and death held together by a correlation of time. Yet, they are joined together even more profoundly than that. They are the beginning and end of the same action, perhaps akin to conception and birth. In baptism, we are given new life, we are made regenerate, and in death, we are born into the fullness of who God has created us to be. A fullness that we shall increase, adding strength to strength. Death is not the end but a birth. As St. Ignatius of Antioch writes as he approaches his martyrdom, “It is good for me to die for Jesus Christ rather than to reign over the farthest bounds of the earth. Him I seek, who died on our behalf; Him I desire, who rose again. The pangs of a new birth are upon me.”
To help us understand how this can be, let us look at the words of Christ at his own death: “It is finished.” What odd words? What is finished: Jesus’s suffering, his life on earth, the work of redemption? What exactly has Christ finished on the cross? To help us understand this, it is important to know that John’s Gospel has very explicit connections to Genesis 1-3. For example, both start with “In the beginning.” But it goes far deeper than just the opening words, more than we could go through in a short “Pondering”. The Early Church noted that at the Creation, God said, “Let there be…let there be…let there be…and it was.” However, when it came to creating man, God said, “Let us make.” An action that doesn’t imply a completed act is ongoing. He said in particular, “Let us make man [or “the human being”] in our own image.” This is what some in the Early Church saw Christ’s reference to. His death is the completion of man, the human being. Finally, it is finished, the true man, and fullness of humanity, is shown on display, not in his glorification but in his humiliation and suffering. Don’t be too quick to dismiss this reading. What was it that Pilate said to Christ: “Behold the man [the human being].”
Christ both heals our broken and sinful humanity, while at the same time completing its creation and revealing it in its fullness in his death. This too is how we become fully human, not in the things we acquire, but by being united to Christ’s death and suffering and following in his footsteps. 1 Peter 2:21 says, “For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps.” And again, St Peter says, “Since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves with the same way of thinking.” And St Paul in his epistle to the Colossians, “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh, I am filling up what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church.” Christ’s work lacks nothing, but we are called to follow after him, in suffering and death, that the work that he has accomplished may be made complete in us. In hardship, in death, we are made who we were created to be, not in a comfortable life, or by avoiding death. We will finally be who God has created us to be as we are united to Christ in our death.
We are united to Christ in our death because in baptism we were first united to Christ in his death. As St. Paul says in Romans 6:3, “Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore, we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.” In baptism, Christ meets us in the grave and raises us to new life with him. We are called to live out our lives in Christ. Having been buried with him, we are called to no longer live according to the world, to live no longer as dead in our trespasses but alive in Christ. In baptism, the love of God has grasped hold of our lives, by no means of ourselves, and God has claimed us as sons and daughters. So that we can find our lives in Christ: “I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” As the beginning of the fullness of life began in loving arms of God in baptism, it ends not in the embrace of death, but the eternal embrace of God as we recline upon the breast of Christ.
Tom and Savina help us understand that the Sacraments of the Gospel, along with the five commonly called sacraments of the Church, are not isolated. Baptism, Holy Communion, Confirmation, Marriage, Confession, and Holy Unction are not separate events; they are the one event of salvation, whereby we are joined to Christ. They join us to the saving work of Christ and form us in his image, the image of the fullness of humanity. They prepare us for death, not as an end but the beginning of life with God. For eternal life with the Godhead is what we are made for, and what the sacraments prepare us for. As we witness these two events, let us remember that the birth pangs of new life are upon us.
God’s Peace,
Fr. Aaron