Sermo de Baptismo

SERMON OF SAINT PAGXANUS ON BAPTISM. I. I desire to set forth how we are born in baptism, and how we are renewed. I shall speak in the very words of Scripture itself, brothers, lest perhaps you believe that I have exulted in style on account of the brilliance of the sentiments; and so that you may be able to understand the mystical matter. And would that I could inculcate it; I seek no glory, for glory belongs to God alone. Only care for you concerns me, and especially for these catechumens, if in some way I can make understood the examination of such great happiness. I shall therefore set forth what the former paganism was, what faith provides, what baptism grants. But if, as I feel, it penetrates your hearts, you will judge, brothers, that no preaching has yet profited us more. Receive therefore, most beloved, in what death a man is placed before baptism. You certainly know that ancient thing, that Adam was appointed to an earthly origin; which condemnation indeed imposed upon him the law of eternal death; and upon all his descendants whom one law held, this death held sway over the whole race, from Adam to Moses (Rom. 5:14). Through Moses, however, only one people was chosen, namely the seed of Abraham, if it could keep the commandments of justice. Meanwhile, we were all held under sin, so that we were the fruit of death: destined for the food of husks and the custody of cattle, that is, for unclean works, through evil angels; under whose domination it was permitted neither to do nor to know justice; for obeying such masters, the matter itself compelled.

From these powers and from this death, attend to how we have been set free. II. After Adam sinned, as I have recounted, the Lord then saying, "You are earth, and to earth you shall go" (Gen. 3:19), he was condemned to death. This condemnation flowed into the entire race. For all have sinned, with nature itself already pressing, as the Apostle says: "Because through one man sin entered, and through the transgression death, and thus it came to all men, in whom all have sinned" (Rom. 5:12). Therefore sin held sway, by whose chains we were dragged as captives to death—namely, everlasting death. This sin, however, before the time of the Law was not even understood, as the Apostle says: "For until the Law was given, sin was not reckoned in the world," that is, it was not seen; at the coming of the Law it revived (Rom. 5:13). For it was laid open so that it might be seen; but in vain, because almost no one observed it. For the Law said: "You shall not commit adultery, you shall not kill, you shall not covet"; yet covetousness together with all vices persisted. Thus that sin, before the Law, killed man with a hidden sword; under the Law, with a drawn one. What hope, then, for man? Without the Law he perished because he could not see sin; and under the Law, because he fell into the very thing he saw. Who could free him from destruction? Hear the Apostle: "Wretched man that I am: Who will free me from this body of death?" "Grace," he says, "through our Lord Jesus Christ" (Rom. 7:24, 25).

III. What is grace? The remission of sin, that is, a gift. For grace is a gift. Therefore Christ, coming and taking up a man, first exhibited that very man, pure and innocent from the power of sin, to God. Isaiah says: Behold, a virgin, he says, will conceive in her womb and bear a son, and you will call his name Emmanuel. He will eat butter and honey before he knows how to utter evil or choose good (Isa. 7:14). And of him again: Who has committed no sin, nor has deceit been found in his mouth (Isa. 43:9). Under this patronage of innocence, as soon as Christ undertook the defense of the name in the very flesh of sin, immediately that parent of sin and disobedience, who had once deceived the first men, began to hasten, to seethe, to tremble. For he was to be conquered by the dissolved law of sin, by which alone he had either held man or could hold him. Therefore he arms himself for spiritual battle against the immaculate one; and first, by that same artifice with which he had conquered Adam in paradise, he approaches under the appearance of dignity; and as if concerned about heavenly power: If you are the Son of God, he says, say that these stones become loaves of bread (Matt. 4:3): so that while he blushes, or is unwilling to dissemble that he is the Son of God, he would carry out the commands of the tempter.

Behold, he is not yet silent, suggesting that if he had cast himself from on high, he would be caught by the hands of the Angels, to whom the Father had commanded that they carry him on their shoulders, lest he perhaps strike his foot against a stone, while the Lord wishes to prove that he is the one of whom the Father had commanded that which the tempter urges to be done. The serpent, cast down at last, as if already yielding, promises those very kingdoms of the world which he had first snatched from man; so that, believing he had conquered the Advocate of man, having received the empire he was defending, he might incline him to the dignity dictated by the impious one, and thus he might sin at some time. But in all these things the enemy is overcome, and is dissolved by heavenly power, as the Prophet says to the Lord: "That you may dissolve," he says, "the enemy and the avenger, for I will see the heavens, the work of your fingers" (Psalm 8:3, 4). IV. The devil ought to have yielded; yet he does not yet cease. He suborns the Scribes and Pharisees and that whole crowd of the impious with known snares, he agitates them with furies. Therefore, after various arts and lying hearts, by which they thought to deceive the Lord with serpentine obsequiousness; after they were accomplishing nothing, they finally attacked him with open brigandage and the most cruel kind of passion: so that, either by the indignity of things or by the pain of punishments, he might do or say something unjust, and thus lose the man he was carrying, and his soul would be left among the infernal regions; for which there was one law, that they would hold the sinner: "For the sting of death is sin" (1 Corinthians 15:56).

Christ therefore persisted, and committed no sin, nor was any deceit found in his mouth (1 Pet. 2:22), as we have said; not even then, when he was led to the sacrifice. This was to conquer: to be condemned without sin. For the devil had received power over sinners, which he claimed for himself over the sinless one; and thus he himself was overcome, decreeing concerning the Just One what was not permitted to 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” (Ps. 50:6). And so, as the Apostle says, when the powers were transferred, Christ condemned sin by affixing it to the cross in the flesh, and cancelling the bond of death (Col. 2:14–15). Hence it is that God did not abandon his soul among the dead, nor allow his Saint to see destruction (Ps. 15:10). Hence it is that, having trampled the stings of death, on the third day he rose again in the flesh, reconciling it to God and restoring it to eternity, with sin conquered and erased.

V. 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, transgression entered; and through transgression, death: thus it came to all men (Rom. 5:12). Therefore the justice of Christ must also pass into the race: and just as he through sin ruined his stock, so Christ through justice gives life to his whole race. This is what the Apostle urges, saying: That just as through the disobedience of one many were made sinners, so through the obedience of one many are made righteous: and just as transgression reigned unto death, so likewise grace may reign through righteousness unto eternal life (Ibid., 19, 21). VI. Someone will say to me: But the sin of Adam justly passed to his descendants, because they were born from him: and are we born from Christ, so that we can be saved on account of him? Do not think carnally: you will soon see how we are generated with Christ as parent. In the last times, Christ received a soul together with flesh from Mary: this soul he came to save, this he did not leave among the dead, this he joined to his own spirit and made his own. And these are the nuptials of the Lord, joined to one flesh, so that according to that great mystery two might become one flesh, Christ and the Church (Eph. 5:32).

From these nuptials the Christian people are born, with the Spirit of the Lord coming from above; and the substances of our souls, with the celestial seed immediately poured over and mingled, grow within the womb of the mother, and, poured forth from her womb, we are given life in Christ. Whence the Apostle: "The first Adam, into a living soul: the last Adam, into a life-giving spirit" (1 Cor. 15:47). Thus Christ generates in the Church through his priests, as the same Apostle says: "But I have begotten you to Christ" (1 Cor. 4:15). And so the seed of Christ, that is, the spirit of God, pours forth the new man, stirred in the womb of the mother and received by the birth of the font, through the hands of the priest, with faith as the bridesmaid. For neither will he be seen as grafted into the Church who has not believed, nor begotten by Christ who has not himself received the spirit. Therefore we must believe that we can be born. For thus Philip says: "If you believe, you can" (Acts 8:37). Christ must be received so that he may generate, because the apostle John says: "As many as received him, he gave them the power to become sons of God" (John 1:12). But these things cannot be fulfilled otherwise, except through the sacrament of the washing, and of the chrism, and of the bishop. For by the washing sins are cleansed; by the chrism the Holy Spirit is poured over; but both of these we obtain by the hand and mouth of the bishop: and thus the whole man is reborn and renewed in Christ; so that, just as Christ rose from the dead, so we also may walk in the newness of life (Rom.

VI, 4); that is, so that, having set aside the errors of the old life—the servitude to idols, cruelty, fornication, luxury, and the other vices of flesh and blood—we may follow new habits through the Spirit in Christ: faith, modesty, innocence, chastity. And just as we have borne the image of the earthly man, let us also bear that of the one who is from heaven; because the first man, from earth, is earthly; the second, from heaven, is heavenly (1 Cor. 15:49, 47). In doing this, most beloved, we shall no longer die again. Even if we are dissolved in this body, we shall live in Christ, as he himself says: "He who has believed in me, though he may die, will live" (John 11:25). Indeed, we are certain, with the Lord himself as witness, that Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and all the saints of God live. Finally, concerning these very ones, the Lord says: "All of them, however, live: for God is of the living, not of the dead" (Luke 20:38). 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" (Phil. 1:21). Further: "We, however, while we are in this body, are away from the Lord on a journey. For we walk by faith, not by sight" (2 Cor. 5:6, 7).

VII. This is what we believe, most beloved brothers. Moreover, if we are hoping in this world, we are more wretched than all men (1 Cor. 15:19). The life of the world is common to cattle, wild beasts, and birds, as you yourselves see, or even longer. And that which is proper to man is what Christ gave through his Spirit: that is, perpetual life—but only if we no longer sin. For just as death is acquired by crime and avoided by virtue, so life is lost by crimes and retained by virtue. Therefore, the wages of sin are death; the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord (Rom. 6:23). Above all, retain this, little ones: that all peoples were once (as we said above) handed over to the princes of darkness and powers; now they are liberated through the victory of Jesus Christ our Lord. He it is, he who redeems, granting us all sins, as the Apostle says, and wiping out the bond of disobedience that was against us; because he also removed it from our midst, affixing it to the cross; stripping himself of flesh, he led the powers in triumph freely in himself (Col. 2:13–15). He loosed the fettered and broke our chains, as David had said: The Lord raises up the cast down, the Lord looses the fettered, the Lord enlightens the blind (Ps. 145:7, 8). And again: You have broken my chains: to you I will sacrifice an offering of praise (Ps. 115:16, 17).

Therefore, freed from our bonds, when we have come together at the sign of the Lord through the sacrament of baptism, we renounce the devil and all his angels, whom we previously served: that we may no longer serve them, freed by the blood and name of Christ. But if anyone thereafter, forgetful of himself and ignorant of his redemption, should again pass over (Col. 2:18) to the servitudes of Angels and (Gal. 4:9) to those weak and needy elements of the world, he will be bound by those ancient fetters and chains, that is, the bonds of sin; and his last state will be worse than the first (Luke 11:26): because the devil will bind him more tightly, as one conquered in flight; and Christ will no longer be able to suffer for him, because he who rose from the dead will die no more (Rom. 6:9). Therefore, most beloved, we are washed once, we are freed once, we are received once into the immortal kingdom: once for all are those happy whose crimes are forgiven and whose sins are covered (Ps. 31:1). Hold firmly to what you have received, keep it happily, be unwilling to sin further. Preserve yourselves pure and spotless from that time until the Lord’s day. Great and infinite rewards are set before the faithful; which, it is said, neither eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor have they entered into the heart of man (1 Cor. 2:9). So that you may be able to receive these, obtain them by the labors of righteousness and by spiritual vows. Amen.