Perhaps you’ve had this experience when driving to a familiar place: You get in your car, buckle your seatbelt, put the key in the ignition, and start the car. You drive to your destination, and when you arrive, you have no idea how you got there or any recollection of the trip you just took. Habits, even good ones, allow us to go on “autopilot.” Translated to the realm of liturgy, habit becomes ritual, but slipping into autopilot can lead to unthinking, mechanical ritualism.
The antidote to unthinking, mechanical ritualism is intentional, recollected acts—what the Second Vatican Council sought, saying that “through a good understanding of the rites and prayers [the faithful] should take part in the sacred action conscious of what they are doing, with devotion and full collaboration” (Sacrosanctum Concilium, 48). This kind of participation requires continual formation to see beyond the signs and symbols of the liturgy to perceive their true content, Christ Jesus. Pope Francis reminds us that this process of liturgical formation is ongoing for all of us: “For ministers as well as for all the baptized, liturgical formation…is not something that can be acquired once and for all. Since the gift of the mystery celebrated surpasses our capacity to know it, this effort certainly must accompany the permanent formation of everyone, with the humility of little ones, the attitude that opens up into wonder” (Desiderio Desideravi, 38).
It can be helpful for our liturgical formation to pause occasionally and dwell on the meaning of the prayers and gestures we make use of frequently and repeatedly—those therefore most likely to allow us to go on autopilot. To this end, I would like to walk through the blessing of baptismal water, a beautiful prayer rich in biblical allusions and theological themes.1 As the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) says, “the meaning and grace of the sacrament of Baptism are clearly seen in the rites of its celebration. By following the gestures and words of this celebration with attentive participation, the faithful are initiated into the riches this sacrament signifies and actually brings about in each newly baptized person” (1234). The minister, through a deepened appreciation of the blessing, will pray it differently, and this will in turn lead the laity more deeply and effectively into the mystery of baptism.
Water: A Sacramental Sign
O God, who by invisible power
accomplish a wondrous effect
through sacramental signs
and who in many ways have prepared water, your creation,
to show forth the grace of Baptism;
The blessing of baptismal water has a sweeping dynamic structure which moves from recalling what God has done in past salvation history to asking God to act in the present. The initial invocation of the blessing recalls two aspects of God’s work of salvation. The first is a description of the sacramental economy. God realizes the wonderous life of grace in us through the outward signs of the sacraments. The sacraments are effective, powerful. The prayer goes on to apply this specifically to the waters of baptism. The blessing then points us to what is to come—the various ways water has appeared in salvation history as prefiguring of the sacrament of baptism. Water as an Old Testament sign, then, is not just a natural symbol, but one providentially chosen and utilized in God’s saving designs from the beginning. The mention of water as “your creation,” anticipates the next section of the blessing which places us in the opening verses of Genesis.
Creation
In the midst of the void and over the darkness of the waters, “the Spirit of God (rûaħ elohim) was moving over the face of the waters” (Genesis 1:2). Translators and commentators have long puzzled over how to render rûaħ in this passage, which could also be translated as the more elemental “wind from God” (cf. NRSV), or “a mighty wind” (NAB-RE). The Order of Baptism is unambiguous. Already in the beginning God’s Spirit is intimately paired with water, a connection that will reoccur throughout the biblical narrative and in the life of the Church.
O God, whose Spirit
in the first moments of the world’s creation
hovered over the waters,
so that the very substance of water
would even then take to itself the power to sanctify;
Here, the English translation limps a bit, and a little knowledge of Latin opens up vistas of meaning. Where the prayer says that water would “take to itself” the power to sanctify, the Latin verb is conciperet. A form of the same word is used in the Latin version of Isaiah 7:14 when the prophet says that a virgin shall conceive and bear (concipiet) a son, and in Luke 1:31 when the angel Gabriel tells Mary, “Behold, you will conceive (concipies) in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name him Jesus.” By using this phraseology, the blessing of baptismal waters is drawing a connection between Christ conceived in the womb of Mary, and the Christian conceived in the font, the womb of the Church. St. Ambrose taught this in the fourth century: “In coming upon Mary, the Holy Spirit brought about the conception and accomplished the redemption; in the same way, by resting on the baptismal font and on those who receive baptism, the same Spirit effects the reality of rebirth” (De mysteriis 53, 59). The same point is made by the Second Vatican Council’s Constitution on the Church: “The Church indeed…by receiving the word of God in faith becomes herself a mother. By her preaching she brings forth to a new and immortal life the sons who are born to her in baptism, conceived of the Holy Spirit and born of God” (Lumen Gentium, 64). This divine pedagogy is already providentially set in motion as the Spirit hovered over the waters of creation.
Old Testament
The blessing then traces several of the central events of the Old Testament that foreshadow baptism, beginning with the flood and the ark.
O God, who by the outpouring of the flood
foreshadowed regeneration,
so that from the mystery of one and the same element of water
would come an end to vice and a beginning of virtue;
The connection between the flood and baptism was already made explicit in the pages of the New Testament. Peter tells us about “the days of Noah during the building of the ark, in which a few persons, eight in all, were saved through water. This prefigured baptism, which saves you now” (1 Peter 3:20-21). As the flood is a type of the waters of baptism, both in its power to destroy sin and to signal a new creation, so the ark has long been seen in Catholic tradition as an image of the Church.
The prayer then moves to the Exodus generation, drawing a parallel between the waters of baptism and the waters of the Red Sea.
O God, who caused the children of Abraham
to pass dry-shod through the Red Sea,
so that the chosen people,
set free from slavery to Pharaoh,
would prefigure the people of the baptized;
St. Cyril of Jerusalem, another fourth century bishop, brought this typology to the foreground as he explained to the newly baptized what they had recently experienced when they renounced Satan: “Now ye must know that this figure is found in ancient history. For when Pharaoh, that most bitter and cruel tyrant, was oppressing the free and high-born people of the Hebrews, God sent Moses to bring them out of the evil bondage of the Egyptians. Then the door posts were anointed with the blood of a lamb, that the destroyer might flee from the houses which had the sign of the blood; and the Hebrew people was marvelously delivered. The enemy, however, after their rescue, pursued after them, and saw the sea wondrously parted for them; nevertheless he went on, following close in their footsteps, and was all at once overwhelmed and engulfed in the Red Sea” (Catechetical Lectures, 19.2). Saved by passing through water, the baptized are freed from slavery to sin, and their opponent, the ancient serpent is, as it were, drowned in the font.
Christ
The blessing turns from the Old Testament to the New. The prayer highlights like bookends the beginning of Christ’s public ministry and its consummation on the cross with mentions of water. Christ initiates his ministry by his own baptism in which he further sanctifies water, and on the cross he gives forth water and blood which the tradition has long read as pouring forth the sacraments of baptism and the Eucharist.
O God, whose Son,
baptized by John in the waters of the Jordan,
was anointed with the Holy Spirit,
and, as he hung upon the cross,
gave forth water from his side along with blood,
and after his Resurrection, commanded his disciples:
‘Go forth, teach all nations, baptizing them
in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,’
The words of Christ at the Great Commission frame what is about to happen in mere moments. The commission is being fulfilled here and now.
Now
The blessing has drawn us from the dawn of time, through the history of salvation, to the very center of all time in Christ’s Paschal Mystery, to arrive at this time. This “now” is the moment of the liturgy. This is the moment in which this child, this elect, is plunged into the great river of life that has been flowing for millennia of salvation history to arrive at this font. This is the time when the Paschal Mystery of Christ’s cross and resurrection becomes contemporaneous with today.
look now, we pray, upon the face of your Church
and graciously unseal for her the fountain of Baptism.
May this water receive by the Holy Spirit
the grace of your Only Begotten Son,
so that human nature, created in your image
and washed clean though the Sacrament of Baptism
from all the squalor of the life of old,
may be found worthy to rise to the life of newborn children
through water and the Holy Spirit.
The language of the prayer brings us back to Genesis and the creation of man “in your image” (Genesis 1:27). The prayer also recalls Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus, in which the Lord affirmed that, unless one is born of anew of water and the Spirit, he cannot see the kingdom of God (John 3:3-5). All of this is the work of the Holy Spirit who is invoked upon the font.
Epiclesis
The rubric then says that the celebrant touches the water with his right hand as he continues the prayer. This gesture is a sign of epiclesis, the invocation of the Spirit.
May the power of the Holy Spirit,
O Lord, we pray,
come down through your Son
into the fullness of this font,
so that all who have been buried with Christ
by Baptism into death
may rise again to life with him.
Who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever.
Amen.
The Catechism highlights well why it is we call upon the Spirit to draw us into the mystery of Christ: “In this sacramental dispensation of Christ’s mystery the Holy Spirit acts in the same way as at other times in the economy of salvation: he prepares the Church to encounter her Lord; he recalls and makes Christ manifest to the faith of the assembly. By his transforming power, he makes the mystery of Christ present here and now. Finally the Spirit of communion unites the Church to the life and mission of Christ” (CCC 1092).
The primary image which follows is drawn from Romans 6, in which Paul speaks vividly about baptism as a participation in Christ’s Paschal Mystery. Christ’s death and resurrection are not merely distant events from two thousand years ago. They are here and now in this font, and this child is plunged into them. No one said this better than St. Cyril of Jerusalem: “O strange and inconceivable thing! We did not really die, we were not really buried, we were not really crucified and raised again; but our imitation was in a figure, and our salvation in reality. Christ was actually crucified, and actually buried, and truly rose again; and all these things he has freely bestowed upon us, that we, sharing his sufferings by imitation, might gain salvation in reality. O surpassing loving-kindness! Christ received nails in his undefiled hands and feet, and suffered anguish; while on me without pain or toil by the fellowship of his suffering he freely bestows salvation” (Catechetical Lectures, 20.5).
Eschatological Fulfillment
The blessing of baptismal waters has magnificently drawn us from creation, through salvation history, to the waters of the Jordan, to the cross and to the tomb, and arrived finally at the font. But the movement of the sacrament doesn’t stop there. The blessing hints at this when it ends by praying that those who have been buried with Christ in baptism, “may rise again to life with him.” The “today” of the font finds fulfillment only in the eternal today of glory.
The various explanatory rites of baptism which follow point to this eschatological goal. The child is anointed with chrism to remain a member of Christ, priest, prophet and king, “unto eternal life.” The white garment is to be brought “unstained into eternal life.” The candle is to be kept burning brightly until “they go out to meet him with all the Saints in the heavenly court.” As a sign that baptism is only a beginning of our pilgrimage, the rite doesn’t have us remain at the font. From the font we process to the altar to pray the Lord’ Prayer, anticipate the child’s future sharing in the Eucharist, and to bless the mother and father who have assumed the responsibility of raising the child in the faith to keep God’s commandments, loving the Lord and their neighbor as Christ has taught us.
Image Source: AB/Wikimedia Commons. Moses and the Children of Israel Crossing the Red Sea, c.1855, by Henri Frédéric Schopin.
Footnotes
- The blessing as it appears in the current liturgical books is a post-conciliar revision of a prayer already present in the eighth-century manuscript of the Gelasian Sacramentary. For details on the origins and revisions of the blessing, see Dominic E. Serra, “The Blessing of Baptismal Water at the Paschal Vigil: Ancient Texts and Modern Revisions,” Worship 64, no. 2 (1990): 142–56.
