Living Our Baptism: Part IV: One in Christ
Fr. Donald Macdonald, SMM
S hortly after arriving in India for the first time, I stood near a window during concelebrated Mass looking for some relief from the oppressive heat. I opened my eyes to see standing beside me a little boy of 5/6 years of age, carrying a wicker-work chair three times as big as himself.
The reason was clear. He thought that I had nowhere to sit, so he brought his chair to me. It was for me, a stranger in his country, a lovely experience. Neither of us could speak each other’s language, and there was the additional gap of age and culture, yet small as he was, he put himself in my shoes and had the imagination and courage to act on what he saw.
REAL PRESENCE
As this happened within Mass, for me the Word became flesh particularly in the child. God gave himself through him. As the boy identified with me and my need, so too does God in Christ. This was real presence. If India has people like this all will be well, I thought – and so it proved to be.
It is not to devalue the child to experience this sacramental depth. In showing the nicer side of human nature, it illustrates at the same time what are and should be the implications of baptism. He and I met in that place because both of us had been baptized into Christ: “for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek … slave or free … male or female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (Gals.3:26-28).
This was an astonishing insight then. It has still to be understood now. What we have in common with Christ should bring us so close that we share the one organic life! Nationality, gender, status … whatever separates us from one another, should be dissolved as we realize that we are individually and collectively cherished by the love of God in Christ. We then see ourselves as ‘a new creation’ in the light of Our Lord who rose from a grave to be with us now.
Literally nothing in life or death, “will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Roms. 8:39). This relationship was made through the sacramental birth of baptism. At one with Christ we are one with each other in Christ. Within the wonder of lived Christianity, and particularly at Mass, I was no more a stranger in India than the Indian boy would have been in my corner of Europe.
ONE BODY
Through my baptism, I am open to a real relationship of knowledge and love with God in Christ through the Spirit. On the part of God it is unquantifiable, since Our Lord rose from a grave to enable me to steep myself in “. . . the unfathomable riches of Christ” (Eph. 3:8). Wonder is the way into this.
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 fourth of six articles on Living Our Baptism. The first article in this series may be found using this link.
What we have in common with Christ should bring us so close that we share the one organic life!
Nationality, gender, status … whatever separates us from one another, should be dissolved as we realize that we are individually and collectively cherished by the love of God in Christ.
On my part, I ought to see that this has been given me through a community called ‘the Church.’ I am, therefore, one with “. . . all those who in every place call on the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ . . .” (lCor. 1:2). My attitude to others, now “. .. brothers and sisters for whom Christ died” (I Cor. 8:11), must reflect the attitude that Jesus has to me. I am to be with them as with Christ.
As the essence of the relationship between God in Christ and myself is limitless love, I then reflect as a Christian clothed in this reality, that I ought to, “owe no one anything except to love one another” (Rom. 13:8). I am, presumably, in debt to everyone I meet, and as the currency is love, clearly I may never pay it adequately. Logically, there is no other way to live given my baptism since, “now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it” (1 Cor. 12:27).
The sensitivity of the child to my plight was superb in terms of our common humanity. It can only be increasingly deepened if I am alive to what it is to be baptized: “if one member of the body suffers, all suffer . . . if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it” (1 Cor.12:26).
RESTORER NOT REFORMER
This perhaps explains why Father de Montfort’s main missionary thrust was an appeal to really live the implications of baptism: “the purpose of (our) missions is to renew the spirit of Christianity among the faithful. The missionaries will, therefore, see to it that, as the Pope has commanded, there is a solemn ceremony for the renewal of the baptismal vows.” (1) He built on what was there trying to help make the insight of faith not just nominal but real. Montfort has perceptively been seen as a restorer not a reformer.
His personal life was at one with his preaching. Returning late one night in Dinan, he found a leper lying in the road. He picked him up and carried him to where he was lodging: “Open, open to Jesus Christ,” he called. The leper spent the night in his bed. The poor always sat at his table.
One winter he went to an island off the French coast to preach in two parishes there, chiefly because he had heard how hopeless the situation was: “the people were . . . ignorant and all the more to be pitied as nobody could or would break the bread of God’s word there.” (2) Father de Montfort and his team sometimes woke to snow on their beds.
Despite the initial “harsh indifference,” he preached and began to restore the dilapidated Church and liturgy. In the process, no doubt he gave them a glimpse of a reason for living and pride in themselves. They began to see something through this committed and selfless man and his team, of what it was to be baptized. They began to change.
The change was fundamental but not total. In the solemn procession to close the mission in the two parishes, the priests in charge quarreled over which of them should carry the Blessed Sacrament! Their ‘problem’ so understandably human, was so much better than any they had before.
FOOTNOTES
- ’Montfort, Rule of the Missionary Priests of the Company of Mary, 56.
- ‘C. Bernard, The Life of Mr. Louis Marie Grignion de Montfort, Priest, Apostolic Missionary,
p. 229, Boy’s Town Singapore 1985.
Vol. #009
July – August 2021
