These different approaches to baptism are based upon differing views of the Holy Spirit. How the Spirit is related to baptism, candidate, and community provides another thematic complex for understanding Christian initiation. Luke does not connect the Spirit with baptism because the prophetic Spirit has nothing to do with sin. Instead, such a Spirit is given after sins are forgiven. As a consequence, in Luke's church, baptism is followed by the laying on of hands for the ecstatic Spirit. Paul and John view the Spirit as a personal possession. For them the Spirit is the agent of the forgiveness of sins as well as of participation in Christ (Paul) and of rebirth as children of God (John). Thus, the theologies of the New Testament relative to the Spirit are diverse, beginning with the more primitive notion of the Spirit as a transient prophetic power and ending with the theme of the Spirit as personal gift to individual and community, the means whereby Jesus would continue to be remembered and celebrated in the future church.
Today, one theology is not chosen over another. Rather, all of these theologies taken together express the multifaceted relationship of the Spirit to the church and its sacraments of initiation. There is not simply one moment during initiation when one could say, "Here is where the Spirit figures in exclusively." Instead, all of initiation is a work of the Spirit. It is true to say, though, that, insofar as we are concerned, the Spirit fulfills different functions. At times the pneumatic aspect of initiation is more apparent, as in the rites of confirmation, than at other times.
The liturgy and theology of initiation, as they evolved during the first five centuries of the church's existence, were influenced by the themes and images of initiation found in the New Testament. But East and West did not always emphasize the same themes. For example, the Western postbaptismal rite that is today called confirmation, with its focus on handlaying with prayer for the sevenfold Spirit (and subsequent consignation of the forehead with chrism), seems to be modeled upon the Lukan description of baptism that is found in Acts. The Eastern rites do not seem to have paid that much attention to the Lukan practice. The contemporary church is the recipient of all these past developments. Since Vatican II and with the recovery of the full process of initiation, the meaning of baptism for Christian life, founded upon the many scriptural theologies of baptism and Spirit, is once more revealed in its richness.
Contemporary Rites and Spiritual LIfe
The general introduction to Christian Initiation utilizes all the scriptural themes spoken of in the previous section. The very first paragraph of this document highlights the importance of initiation for the life of the community and of the individual:
Through the sacraments of Christian initiation, men and women are freed from the power of darkness. With Christ they die, are buried and rise again. They receive the Spirit of adoption which makes them God's sons and daughters and, with the entire people of God, they celebrate the memorial of the Lord's death and resurrection.
Such exalted language would seem to establish the thinking of the church that baptismal initiation is at the foundation of the church itself, of Christian life, and, in particular, of Christian spirituality. If this is so, then the rites themselves should be the vehicles of an overwhelming experience that affects candidate and community.
Any examination of the spirituality of the contemporary sacraments of initiation begins with the context in which these sacraments are to be normally celebrated: the Easter vigil. It is on the "night truly blessed, when heaven is wedded to earth and humanity is reconciled with God," that the whole process of initiation reaches its ritual climax. The Easter vigil is the celebration of transitions, of passovers. On this night Christ passes from death to life, the church journeys with him, and new members become full members of the ecclesial body of Christ for the first time. During each subsequent vigil in which they participate, they will remember their "birthday" into the church and again renew their intention to follow the Lord, whose death they have shared. The Easter vigil is the Christian Passover. Each of the rites of the vigil speaks in one way or another of transition.
The light service rehearses Christ's passage from death to life through fire and procession and candle and poetic utterance. The service of readings reveals God's plan throughout the whole of history, that all men and women should pass from the darkness of sin to the light or adoption through Christ and in his risen Spirit. The litany of saints -- a processional chant during which the community processes to the font -- invokes the whole of the church triumphant to witness the events of this night. All of the holy ones who have gone before us and made their own passage from death to life, who have now completed their earthly initiation by rejoicing in the fullness of the kingdom, are asked to pray for the candidates.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In