Sermo De Mysterio Baptisimatis [ncertus]

SERMON ON THE MYSTERY OF BAPTISM. A caution for those to be baptized. The grace of the waters of baptism. Those to be baptized are questioned concerning faith in the Trinity. What faith is required of others. The faith of the resurrection. The triple immersion and why. Baptism is not repeated. We promised in the first discourse that we would speak to you about all the mysteries which you have attained through our ministry and the grace of Christ, lest any negligence arise in you from ignorance. But we consulted your labor and memory, providing that either your mind, wearied by listening, could not understand everything, or that memory, burdened by the simultaneous knowledge of many things, would quickly lose even what it had understood. Therefore, in the first preaching we spoke only of those things which we handed down to you, according to the institutions of the Catholic rule, before you came to the holy font: and we interpreted what the anointing signified, which, applied to different parts of your body, designates a different understanding, as the Lord has deigned to grant; when we showed that you were prepared by the oil of sanctification for the hearing of the full faith, and called to the good odor of Christ, and admonished to renounce the devil with your whole heart. Now, however, we are about to speak of the inner mysteries which were celebrated at the holy font itself. For after the most certain caution by which you were admonished to renounce all the pomps and works of him [the devil], and all...

You pledged yourselves to diabolical fornication, descending into the font—the sacred font, the font of life, the font of redemption, the font sanctified by heavenly power; and so sanctified that it sanctifies men by washing away many sins. For you ought not to judge those waters by the eyes, but by the mind. For even if the substance of that water is from the common nature of waters, yet its special effect proceeds from the grace and power of God, who created the waters by which bodily and visible filth is washed away. He therefore sanctified the waters, by which, through the secret power of His might, He would wash away sins that are not seen. For the Holy Spirit works in that water, so that those who before Baptism were held as guilty of various crimes and were destined to burn with the devil in the eternal fire of gehenna, after Baptism may merit to enter the kingdom of heaven. Hence the Lord in the Gospel, expressing the power of so great a sacrament, says: “Unless one is born again of water and the Holy Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God” (John 3:5).

In this font, therefore, before we immersed you entirely with your body, we asked, "Do you believe in God the Father almighty?" You each answered, "I believe." Again we asked, "Do you also believe in Jesus Christ his Son, who was born of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary?" You each answered, "I believe." A third time we asked, "And in the Holy Spirit?" You answered likewise, "I believe." Now we did this according to the command of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who, when he ascended to the Father in heaven, charged his disciples, that is, the Apostles, saying, "Go, baptize all nations in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to keep all things that I have commanded you" (Matthew 28:19). But let no one, when he hears Father and Son and Holy Spirit, think that we confess three gods. May that sacrilege be far from our faith, for we have learned, with God himself as witness, that there is one God. "I," he says, "am God, and there is no other besides me; just and savior there is none besides me. Turn to me, and you will be saved; because at the ends of the earth I am God, and there is no other besides me" (Isaiah 45 and 22). And in another book, "Hear, O Israel; the Lord your God is one God." And again, "The Lord your God is here in heaven above, and on earth below, and there is no other besides him" (Deuteronomy 6:4, 4:).

We therefore hold and believe three persons, that is, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, of one power, of one substance, of one eternity, of one will, and also of one deity: and we venerate the whole Trinity under the appellation of one God. But to believe in many gods is the impiety of pagans; and again, not to believe in three persons of one substance in one deity and equality or coeternity is heretical madness: since this is the manifest authority, as we have said, of Christ, "Baptize all nations in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit." But when we asked, "Do you believe in the holy Church, and in the remission of sins, and in the resurrection of the flesh?" we did not ask in such a way that, as one believes in God, so also one believes in the holy and catholic Church. It is holy and catholic for this reason, because it rightly believes in God. Therefore we did not say that you should believe in the Church as if in God: but understand us to say, and to have said, that living in the holy and catholic Church you should believe in God: you should also believe in the resurrection of the flesh, which is to come. Just as, therefore, you believed in the mystery of the Trinity, and you received one God in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit; just as you believed that sins were to be remitted to you, and now through Baptism you believe they have been remitted: so also believe that the resurrection of the flesh is to come; which you certainly promised that you believe.

For in this consists the whole hope of Christians: that we believe the resurrection of this body, not of another, will truly occur; and that just as we now stand in this church before the altar of God, so we believe we will stand on the day of judgment before the tribunal of God, as the blessed apostle Paul says, "For we must all appear before the tribunal of Christ, so that each one may render account of his own body, according to what he has done, whether good or evil" (2 Cor. 5:10). This is what unbelieving souls do not believe will happen. And there are some who promise to believe with their lips but despair in their hearts: they do great injury to almighty God, from whom they do not believe that men can be raised and brought to life after death. But we, who give faith to the divine words, cannot doubt our resurrection. For we believe that God, who made men when they did not exist before, can easily remake those who have existed. He who made heaven, earth, and seas, and all that is in them, and all the elements out of nothing, how can he not be able to restore men, whom he made so that they would live in this life in order to be judged in another, and either merit rewards for good will or punishments for evil?

This is the faith of Catholic Christians: that we believe we will rise again with this soul in which we now exist, having as a fitting example of the resurrection Christ Himself, our Lord, the Word of the Father: who, since He is God and Son of God, God the Word, and coeternal and consubstantial with the Father according to the substance of the divinity, therefore took upon Himself a man of our nature (according to which He willed to be born of a Virgin, and afterwards to suffer and die, and on the third day rose again, and ascended into the heavens), in order to kindle us to the hope of resurrection; so that we believe we are to be raised from the dead, just as we confess that Christ rose from the dead. Hence the blessed Apostle rebukes the minds of the unbelieving, saying, "But if Christ is preached as having risen from the dead, how is it that some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead" (1 Cor. 15:12)? Hold this firmly and believe it, that which is affirmed by divine voices, that a resurrection will take place, in which to all the saints who love Christ and do His will, glorious immortality is to be granted, so that they may glory forever in the sight of God with the Angels and heavenly Powers: but the unbelievers and sinners, and those who do not keep God's commandments, are to rise for this purpose, that their flesh, made immortal, may be consigned to eternal fires; so that it may always burn, and never, in burning, be consumed.

Indeed, the testimony of our Lord Jesus Christ Himself confirms this, who declared in the Gospel concerning sinners: "Then the wicked will go into eternal punishment, but the just into eternal life" (Matt. 25:46). These are the things we have spoken of up to this point. After you promised to believe, we immersed your heads three times in the sacred font. This order of Baptism is celebrated with a twofold significance of the mystery. For you were rightly immersed three times, who received Baptism in the name of the Trinity. You were rightly immersed three times, who received Baptism in the name of Jesus Christ, who rose from the dead on the third day. For that threefold immersion represents the type of the Lord's burial; through which you were buried with Christ in Baptism, and rose again with Christ in faith, so that, washed clean of sins, you might live in holiness and virtue by imitating Christ. Hence the blessed Apostle says: "Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized in Christ Jesus have been baptized into his death? For we have been buried with him through Baptism into death, so that just as Christ rose from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall also be of the resurrection; knowing this, that our old man has been crucified together with him, so that we might destroy the body of sin, that we might no longer serve sin" (Rom. 6:3-6). Consider, dearest brothers, under what condition the Apostle said the baptized exist.

So that, he says, we may no longer serve sin. For what great—I do not say negligence, but madness—is it, when through Baptism you have received remission of sins, to wish to be bound by sins; so that, having been made holy from a sinner, you again wish to be a sinner from a holy man; and after that sacred font, which it is permitted to wash in only once, to return again to the filth of vices? Therefore, attend, most beloved, that what you have received, which can no longer be received by you again, you may keep whole and immaculate until the end; and, having been made pure without sin, you may withdraw forever from all sins. For Christ, who cleansed you, polluted and befouled by diabolical persuasion, through his mercy, does not wish the cleansed to be befouled again. Glory and honor to him, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, forever and ever. Amen.