Homily for Easter Vigil 2010

Abbot Caedmon Holmes, O.S.B

Saturday, April 3, 2010

St Paul sees that in baptism it is into Jesus' death that we are baptized. Immersed into his death, syntaphentes, consepulti, buried together with him into death, so as to rise with him into new and deathless Life.

At the beginning of the passage of the sixth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans which we just heard, Paul asks,

"Are you unaware that we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?"

Immediately before asking that question, he asks another:

"How can we who died to sin still live in it?"

He does not say, Unless you die to sin, you can't belong to Christ. Instead he says: You were baptized into Christ's death; you died with him.  Now you belong to him, so live accordingly. BECAUSE Christ, for your sake, died to sin once for all and, for your sake, lives to God, you also MUST see yourselves as dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

We, the baptized, have died to sin in Baptism.

Tonight three of you will be initiated into membership in Christ. Newly initiated Christians, the newly baptized, are called "neophytes": young sprouts, newly planted [your biology teacher could give you more terms which include the element "-phyte", meaning "plant"].

St Paul's Greek says, "If we have been planted with him [symphytoi] in the likeness of his death, we shall certainly be planted with him in likeness to his resurrection."

These are the sacraments of initiation:

Baptism,  

Confirmation, and

Holy Communion...;

You might ask, But, what about Confession?  Where does Confession come in to Christian initiation?

The answer is: It doesn't.

The sacrament of Penance, or Confession, or Reconciliation, exists to help baptized Christians as their life in Christ progresses---or get it restarted after it has stalled. Because while we really do die to sin in Baptism, we will find that in practice, it takes a lifetime for that Death-to-sin to work itself out to its full effect. Therefore tonight's neophytes should not be surprised or driven to despair---nor should any of us---if they find that their dying to sin needs to be repaired from time to time, and as it were realigned, by going to Confession and receiving absolution.

Nevertheless, Baptism does work. It is everything it's claimed to be: so there is no Confession for those who are being initiated: Baptism itself, in an instant, blows all the sins of their past lives into nothingness.

Instead of Confession, before the baptismal water is poured on them, they make a formal act of rejecting Satan and all his works and all his pomps (his outwardly glamorous but inwardly empty display).

Sin is vanquished.  Likewise, being baptized into Christ's death means that we are actually immune to death, but that immunity will be worked out on a long journey which for each of us will pass through our personal death. There is nothing to fear: Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.  Christ is risen and has shone upon us.

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