Sermon on Baptism

I wish to disclose how we are born in baptism and how we are renewed. I will speak indeed in his own words, brothers, lest you perhaps think that I have exulted in my pen for the polish of my sentences; and so that you may be able to understand a mystical matter: and would that I could impress it on you! I do not seek glory; for glory belongs to God alone. Only care for you troubles me, and especially for these candidates, if in any way I can understand the trial of so great a happiness. I will disclose, then, what paganism was before, what faith provides, what baptism grants. And if this enters your hearts as I feel it, you will judge, brothers, that no preaching has yet given us more. Hear, then, dearest ones, in what death a man is placed before baptism. You certainly know that ancient fact, that Adam was consigned to his earthly origin; and this condemnation laid on him the law of eternal death; and over all his descendants, whom one law held, this death ruled over the whole race, from Adam to Moses. Through Moses one people only was chosen, namely the seed of Abraham, if it could have kept the commandments of righteousness. Meanwhile we were all held under sin, so as to be the fruit of death, destined for the food of husks and the keeping of swine, that is, for unclean works, through the evil angels; under whose rule it was not permitted either to do or to know righteousness; for the situation itself compelled obedience to such masters. Hear how we were set free from these powers and from this death.

After Adam sinned, as I said, when the Lord then said, “You are earth, and to earth you will go,” he was consigned to death. This consignment flowed down into the whole race. For all sinned, with nature itself now pressing them, as the Apostle says: “For through one man sin entered, and through the fault death, and so it came to all men, in whom all sinned.” So sin ruled, by whose chains we were dragged like captives to death, that is, to eternal death. But this sin was not understood before the times of the law, as the Apostle says: “For until the law was given, sin was not counted in the world,” that is, it was not seen; at the coming of the law it revived. For it was opened up so that it might be seen; but in vain, because almost no one kept it. For the law said: “You shall not commit adultery, you shall not kill, you shall not covet”; yet covetousness remained with all the vices. So this sin killed man with a hidden sword before the law, and with a drawn sword under the law. What hope, then, for man? Without the law he perished because he could not see sin; and under the law because he ran into the very thing that he saw. Who could free him from destruction? Hear the Apostle: “Wretched man that I am! Who will free me from the body of this death? Grace,” he says, “through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

What is grace? The remission of sin, that is, a gift. For grace is a gift. So Christ, coming and taking up man, was the first to present that very man to God pure and innocent of the power of sin. Isaiah says: “Behold, a virgin will conceive in the womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Emmanuel. Butter and honey he will eat, before he knows either to bring forth evil or to choose good.” And again of him: “He committed no sin, nor was deceit found in his mouth.” Under this protection of innocence, as soon as Christ undertook the defence of the name in the very flesh of sin, at once that parent of the disobedience of sin, who had once deceived the first human beings, began to hurry, to seethe, to tremble. For he was to be conquered once the law of sin was dissolved, by which alone he had held man or could hold him. He arms himself, then, for spiritual battle against the spotless one; and first, with that craft by which he had conquered Adam in paradise, he attacks under the appearance of dignity; and as if concerned for his heavenly power he says: “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread,” so that, out of shame or unwillingness to conceal that he was the Son of God, he might carry out the tempter’s commands. See, he still does not keep silent, suggesting that if he threw himself down from on high he would be caught in the hands of the angels, whom the Father had commanded to carry him on their shoulders lest he strike his foot against a stone; so that, while the Lord wished to prove that he was the one for whom the Father had commanded this, he would do what the tempter urged. Dashed down at last, the serpent, as though already giving way, promises the very kingdoms of the world that he had snatched from the first man; so that, while he believed he had conquered the Advocate of man, by recovering the dominion that he was defending, he might bend him to the dignity offered by the wicked one, and so at last make him sin. But in all these things the enemy is overcome and undone by heavenly power, as the prophet says to the Lord: “that you may destroy the enemy and the avenger; for I will see the heavens, the work of your fingers.”

The devil ought to have given way; yet he does not stop. He suborns the scribes and Pharisees and that whole band of the wicked with his familiar snares and drives them with frenzies. So after various arts and lying hearts, by which they planned, in the manner of the serpent, to deceive the Lord with flatteries, when they made no progress they at last attacked him with open brigandage and the cruellest kind of suffering, so that, through the outrage of what was done or the pain of the punishments, he might do or say something unjust, and so lose the man whom he bore, and his soul be left in the underworld, whose one law was to hold the sinner: “For the sting of death is sin.” Christ therefore stood firm, and committed no sin, nor was deceit found in his mouth, as we said, not even when he was led to be sacrificed. This was to conquer: to be condemned without sin. For the devil had received power over sinners, and he claimed it for himself over the spotless one; and so he himself was overcome, decreeing over the Righteous One what was not permitted him by the law he had received. Hence the prophet says to the Lord: “That you may be justified in your words, and conquer when you are judged.” And so, as the Apostle says, Christ, leading the powers in triumph, condemned sin in the flesh, nailing it to the cross and cancelling the bond of death. That is why God did not leave his soul in the underworld, nor let his Holy One see corruption. That is why, the stings of death trampled down, on the third day he sprang up again in the flesh, reconciling it to God and restoring it to eternity, sin being conquered and erased.

But if he alone conquered, what did he confer on the rest? Hear briefly. The sin of Adam had passed into the whole race: “For through one man,” as the Apostle says, “the fault entered, and through the fault death; and so it came to all men.” Therefore the righteousness of Christ too must pass into the race; and as he through sin lost his offspring, so Christ through righteousness gives life to his whole race. The Apostle presses this when he says: “That as through the disobedience of one many were made sinners, so through the obedience of one many may be made righteous; and as the fault reigned unto death, so also grace may reign through righteousness unto eternal life.”

Someone will say to me: “But the sin of Adam rightly passed to his descendants, because they were begotten of him; are we begotten of Christ, so that we can be saved because of him?” Do not think carnally: you will soon see how we are begotten with Christ as parent. In the last times Christ took from Mary a soul together with flesh: this he came to save, this he did not leave in the underworld, this he joined to his Spirit and made his own. And this is the marriage of the Lord, joined to one flesh, so that according to that great mystery the two might become one flesh, Christ and the church. From this marriage the Christian people is born, the Spirit of the Lord coming from above; and as the heavenly seed is at once poured upon and mingled with the substance of our souls, we grow in the womb of our mother, and, brought forth from her womb, we are given life in Christ. Hence the Apostle says: “The first Adam became a living soul; the last Adam a life-giving spirit.” So Christ begets in the church through his priests, as the same Apostle says: “For I begot you in Christ.” And so the seed of Christ, that is, the Spirit of God, brings forth by the hands of the priest the new man, stirred in the mother’s womb and received at birth from the font, with faith, however, as the bride’s attendant. For neither will one who has not believed be seen to be grafted into the church, nor one who has not himself received the Spirit to be begotten by Christ. We must believe, then, that we can be born. For so Philip says: “If you believe, you may.” Christ must be received so that he may beget, for so the apostle John says: “As many as received him, he gave them power to become children of God.” But these things cannot be fulfilled except by the sacrament of the washing, of the chrism, and of the bishop. For by the washing sins are cleansed; by the chrism the Holy Spirit is poured upon us; and both of these we obtain by the hand and mouth of the bishop. And so the whole man is reborn and renewed in Christ; so that, as Christ rose from the dead, so we too may walk in newness of life: that is, that, having laid aside the errors of the old life, the slavery of idols, cruelty, sexual immorality, luxury, and the other vices of flesh and blood, we may follow new ways through the Spirit in Christ: faith, modesty, innocence, chastity. And as we have borne the image of the earthly man, let us bear also the image of him who is from heaven; for the first man was from the earth, earthly; the second from heaven, heavenly. Doing this, dearly beloved, we shall die no more. Even if we are dissolved in this body, we shall live in Christ, as he himself says: “Whoever believes in me, though he die, will live.” Indeed, we are certain, on the Lord’s own testimony, that Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the saints of God are alive. For of these very ones the Lord says: “But all of them live; for he is the God of the living, not of the dead.” And the Apostle says of himself: “For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain; I would wish to be dissolved and to be with Christ.” And further: “But while we are in this body we are away from the Lord. For we walk by faith, not by sight.”

This is what we believe, dearly beloved brothers. Otherwise: “If we are hoping in this age only, we are more pitiable than all men.” The life of the world, as you see for yourselves, is either common to us with cattle and wild beasts and birds, or longer in them. And what is proper to man is what Christ gave through his Spirit, that is, everlasting life; but only if we sin no more. For as death is acquired by crime and avoided by virtue, so life is lost by crimes and kept by virtue. “The wages of sin, then, is death; the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Above all keep this in mind, little ones: all the nations were once (as we said above) handed over to the princes and powers of darkness; now they are set free through the victory of Jesus Christ our Lord. He it is, he who redeems, forgiving us all sins, as the Apostle says, and blotting out the bond of disobedience that was against us; for he took it out of the way, nailing it to the cross; stripping off the flesh, he led the powers in triumph, freely triumphing over them in himself. He loosed those in fetters and burst our bonds, as David had said: “The Lord raises those who are crushed, the Lord looses those in fetters, the Lord gives light to the blind.” And again: “You have burst my bonds; to you I will offer the sacrifice of praise.” So, loosed from our bonds, when through the sacrament of baptism we come to the sign of the Lord, we renounce the devil and all his angels, whom we served before, so that we may serve them no longer, set free by the blood and name of Christ. But if anyone afterwards, forgetting himself and ignorant of his redemption, passes over again to the service of angels and to those weak and beggarly elements of the world, he will be bound with those old fetters and chains, that is, with the bonds of sin; and his last state will be worse than the first; for the devil will bind him the more tightly as one conquered, as it were, in flight, and Christ will no longer be able to suffer for him, because he who has risen from the dead will die no more. Therefore, dearly beloved, once we are washed, once we are set free, once we are received into the immortal kingdom; once are they happy whose crimes are forgiven and whose sins are covered. Hold firmly what you have received, keep it happily, do not wish to sin any more. Keep yourselves pure and spotless from then on for the day of the Lord. Great and infinite are the rewards prepared for the faithful, which “eye has not seen,” it says, “nor ear heard, nor have they entered into the heart of man.” That you may receive these, obtain them by the labours of righteousness and spiritual vows. Amen.