Living Our Baptism: Part II: A Real Relationship
Fr. Donald Macdonald, SMM
F or any relationship to be real it has to be on the basis of knowledge and love. People with no shared interests can cooperate to build a house, but to live a genuinely deep relationship inside the house, and so make it a home, it must be through knowledge and love. Most people have more acquaintances than friends. The deepest relationships are few and personal.
INTO HIS DEATH
St. Paul implies this truth in his understanding of what it means to be baptized: “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death . . . we were buried therefore with him . . .” (Roms.6:4). There is colossal power in that. It speaks of the closest identity. Christ, though sinless himself, was born into our human condition not excluding death. His fidelity to his Father’s will put him at odds with the leadership of his day. The tension led eventually to crucifixion and death.
Sin is a fact of life. Evil was sufficiently powerful to engineer the crucifixion of Christ. It has a toehold in me. At times I please myself, not God, not you, not people who have a claim on me. I can be as stubborn as a child in a tantrum. But, says St. Paul, precisely because I am baptized into Christ’s death, I need not walk with a permanent limp, shackled by the dark side of my life through sin. In the power and presence of Christ I am able to break through whatever selfishly imprisons me.
Jesus through betrayal, crucifixion and death experienced the hurt that sin can cause – “. . . for our sake (God) made him to be sin who knew no sin . . .” (2 Cor.5 21). I at my worst or lowest can be free through the power and presence of Jesus, who once faced all that sin can do in its horrifying reality. For this to be effective it cannot just mean that I draw inspiration from what Jesus did then to help me act now. Imitation and inspiration may be part of it, but only as an expression of a relationship already entered into through knowledge and love.
Following the example of a ‘leader now on earth no longer’ can at best offer only marginal help. The link between Jesus and myself needs to be deeper and more immediate. For me as a human being, it must be, therefore, in terms of knowledge and love. Anything else is peripheral.
NEWNESS OF LIFE
The excitement, challenge and wonder of this is caught by St. Paul in the analogies he uses to explain it: “. . . just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life” (Roms. 6:4). Through our attachment to God in Christ, which we entered at baptism, we do not limp. We walk, alive to a new perspective on life. It is a new outlook for a new creation.
The Lord who once was crucified and buried yet rose from a grave, has the power to change my center of gravity from self to Christ. Again, St. Paul implies that this is through a truly personal relationship: “for if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his” (Roms. 6:5). The presence of my risen Lord can help me break from the chronically selfish ‘me’ as long as I accept my risen Jesus as genuinely Lord of myself. In baptism I am empowered to return love for love.
The Baptism of Christ: Italian painter: Paris Paschalinus Bordone: 1535-1540
The painting resides at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
This is the second of six articles on Living Our Baptism. The first article in this series may be found using this link.
Through our attachment to God in Christ, which we entered at baptism, we do not limp. We walk, alive to a new perspective on life. It is a new outlook for a new creation.
Again St. Paul’s powerful imagery makes the point: “we know that our old self was crucified with him so that . . . we might no longer be enslaved to sin. For whoever has died is freed from sin” (Roms. 6:5-7). Christ accepts me as I am, ‘warts and all,’ and in his love for me expressed through resurrection from a grave, after being crucified and buried by sin, empowers me to break from slavery to sin and self.
I note the power of the imagery. It must mean a personal relationship through knowledge and love other-wise it is but an external analogy. That perhaps would illustrate the point but it does not make the point as St. Paul so obviously experiences it. In so far as I glimpse this wholly positive gift from God in Christ as a present relationship, to which I am personally invited to respond, I will be among those who “also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Roms. 6:11).
‘Alive to God in Christ Jesus’ is wonderfully evocative. It suggests tingling all over with awareness and anticipation. There is more to conquer in this world of infinite possibilities. It is what I might hope for and realistically expect from a genuinely personal relationship based on knowledge and love.
THE PERSONAL CHRIST
Father de Montfort was a very ill man when he preached his last sermon. He had pleurisy, yet made his way to the pulpit to speak of ‘The gentleness of Jesus’. He was forty three years old.
Like St. Paul, he too was, “ready to share with you not only the gospel of God, but also our own selves . . ” (1 TH.2:8), and literally, with his last breath, channeled it through the gentleness of Jesus.
The same pattern is set in his book The Love of Eternal Wisdom believed to have been written in the early years of his priesthood. There too he has an extended treatment of the gentleness of Jesus: “As the divine Wisdom (Jesus) became man only to stir the hearts of men to love and imitate him, he took pleasure in gracing his human nature . . . especially (with) an endearing gentleness and kindness . . . In his origin . . . He was given out of love and fashioned by love . . . What does the name of Jesus … signify … if not ardent charity, infinite love and engaging gentleness? The distinctive characteristic of Jesus … is to love and save men and women” (LEW 117-120).
In what is unconsciously a self-portrait Montfort reflects that, “poor people and little children followed him everywhere seeing him as one of their own . . . But how describe the gentleness of Jesus in his dealings with poor sinners?” (LEW 124-125). Clearly a personal relationship with Jesus his Lord, graced him to speak and act like that.
