The office of readings this morning has a beautiful piece by St. Ambrose, fourth century Bishop of Milan and Doctor of the Church. St. Ambrose, contemporary of St. Jerome and St. Augustine, helped put down the Arian heresy and was very popular and beloved by the ordinary faithful.
His piece this morning is on baptism (Liturgy of the Hours, vol. III, p. 496, for those of you who use it), and it stirs many thoughts of my own on the nature of incarnational spirituality, about which we yet have much to understand, and how that relates to sacramental spirituality.
The parts that really strike me are:
I see the water I used to see every day; does this water in which I have often bathed without being sanctified really have the power to sanctify me? Learn from this that water does not sanctify without the Holy Spirit.
You have read that the three witnesses in baptism – the water, the blood and the Spirit – are one. This means that if you take away one of these the sacrament of baptism is not conferred. What is water without the cross of Christ? Only an ordinary element without sacramental effect. Again, without water there is no sacrament of rebirth: Unless a man is born again of water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. The catechumen believes in the cross of the Lord . . .
. . . Mark the sequence of events. In proclaiming this faith you died to the world, you rose again to God, and, as though buried to sin, you were reborn to eternal life. Believe, then, that the water is not without effect.
. . . The paralytic at the pool was waiting for someone. Who was this if not the Lord Jesus, born of a virgin? At his coming it is not a question of a shadow healing an individual, but Truth himself healing the universe [emphasis added]. . . . He is the one witnessed to by John: I saw the Spirit coming down from heaven as a dove and resting on him. Why did the Spirit come down as a dove it not to let you see and understand that the dove sent out by holy Noah from the ark was a figure of this dove?
. . . The Father speaks clearly in the Gospel: this is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; the Son too, above whom the Holy Spirit showed himself in the form of a dove. . . . David too speaks clearly: The voice of the Lord is above the waters; the God of glory has thundered; the Lord is above the many waters.
. . . Consider the merits of Peter and also of Paul . . . they have handed on to us this sacrament which they received from the Lord Jesus.
Ambrose is saying that neither water alone, nor the Spirit alone, nor faith in the blood of the cross alone sanctify in baptism, but all together. The matter of the water, the blood of the cross, the power of the Spirit, the faith of the believer all work together, to bring about the death and rebirth that is baptism.
Here, I find myself thinking about incarnational spirituality. Catholicism is incarnational. We have so much unlearning to do in this dualistic world where we think of matter and spirit as being two different things, unrelated.
Ambrose ties baptism of the individual to the baptism of Jesus and the baptism of the world during the flood. In contemplating this, there springs into my mind another image: creation, when the Spirit of the Lord hovered over the waters: the original baptism, the original creation. The creation of matter by God, the interaction of God with matter, the filling of matter by God with life; the creating and filling of human life with the life of God. Matter, the world, the universe, has a purposeful existence: God created it to show forth His own glory, and filled it with life to share in His own Life.
Matter was never intended to exist independently of God, and though fallen, it is not independent of God now. It is fallen, but is destined to be re-created, at the new creation, in Christ. The re-creation of the world began with the flood, the baptism of the fallen world, into which then came Abraham, the father of the People of God, from whom came our redeemer Christ. The flood and the calling of Abraham prepared the earth and humanity for the coming of Christ into the world, and into human flesh.
Through Christ the original creation came to be:
He is the image of the invisible God,
the first-born of all creation;
for in him all things were created,
in heaven and on earth,
visible and invisible . . .
all things were created through him and for him.
He is before all things,
and in him all things hold together. (Col 1:15-17)
Through Christ the new creation, the church, the earth, and heaven, are coming to be:
He is the head of the body, the church;
he is the beginning, the first-born from the dead . . .
For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell,
and through him to reconcile to himself all things,
whether on earth or in heaven,
making peace by the blood of his cross. (Col 1:18-20)
Meditating on these images, I begin to see something I hadn’t seen before: baptism is more than just a symbolic passage, or as a sacrament more than just an individual rite for the individual believer. It unites many elements: faith, blood, water, Spirit, in bringing the believer to new life. But it is not only a passage to new life in Christ, more even than incorporation into the mystical Body. It is an introduction into the new creation, the process of the re-creation of matter as God intended matter to be, incorrupt and unfallen, properly showing forth and being permeated with all the Glory and Spirit and Life of God, the reason for matter’s creation. As Ambrose saw, Christ came not just to heal individuals, but to heal the entire universe.
Not only the matter of water, but the matter of our bodies are involved in baptism. The re-creation will be completed at the resurrection of our bodies, when Christ comes again and does away with the old, fallen world, and brings about the fullness of the new heavens and earth. In a sense, the new creation has already begun, and baptism, the working of the Holy Spirit and the blood of the cross through water by our faith, introduces each one of us into it, body and soul.
This is what incarnational spirituality means. This is what sacramentalism is: the re-uniting of spirit and matter; the raising of matter to, and filling it with, the Spirit of God, for the glory of God. The reason for Christ’s incarnation was both salvific and redemptive: of all creation. He incarnated in order to begin the process of restoring all creation to its right place with God. He humbled himself in human flesh to death on a cross (Php 2:8) so that, in rising, he could raise all creation with him, beginning with his own body, bit by bit, piece by piece, life by believing life, until he comes again to complete his work of restoration.
Every sacrament involves matter and spirit in some way, for this reason. Incarnational, sacramental spirituality sees matter not as something different from God in a dualistic way, but as an integral part of God’s activity, not God, but created by God to show forth his glory, through and upon which His Spirit works. That includes the earth, our bodies, everything. The universe itself, matter, is to be redeemed in Christ, raised to God, permeated with the Holy Spirit, to show forth His glory for all eternity. The universe itself, and our very bodies, is sacred, because it shows forth the glory of the invisible God.
I have often wondered about the meaning of these things, and I see something here very deep that I hadn’t seen before. I don’t know how theologically sound it is; I’ll be studying sacramental theology this coming year, and then I suppose I can find out if these ideas are fitting.
