25.
When the bishop says, ‘In the name of the Father’, he recalls the Father’s
words: ‘This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.’ When he says, ‘Of
the Son’, take these words to refer to him who was present in the man who was
baptized, and acknowledged that he has obtained adoption for you. When he says,
‘Of the Holy Spirit’, remember the one who descended in the form of a dove and
remained on him, and in short expect that your adoption too will be confirmed
by the same Spirit. For, as st. Paul said, ‘those who are called by the Spirit
of God are sons of God’. The only genuine adoption is that granted by the Holy
spirit; but it is not genuine if the Spirit is not present to produce the
effect and encourage us to receive the gift in which we have faith. And so, by
the invocation of the father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, you have received
the grace of adoption.
26.
We soon as you came up out of the front, you put on a dazzling garment of
pure white. This is a sign of the world of shining splendour and the way of
life to which you have already passed in symbol. When you experience the
resurrection in reality and put on immortality and incorruptibility, you will
not need such garments any longer; but you need them now, because you have not
yet received these gifts in reality, but only in symbols and signs.
27.
When you have received grace by means of baptism, then, and put on this shining
white garment, the bishop comes to you and puts a seal on your forehead,
saying: ‘N. is sealed in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy
Spirit’. When Jesus came up out of the water, he received the grace of the
Holy spirit, which came and remained on him in the form of a dove. This is why
he too is said to have been anointed by the Holy Spirit: ‘The spirit of the
Lord is upon me,’ and said, ‘and therefore the Lord has anointed me.’ ‘Jesus of
Nazareth, whom God anointed with the Holy Spirit and with power.’ This shows
that the Holy Spirit never leaves him, just as the anointing attaches to those
who are anointed by men with oil and never leaves them. You too, then, must be
sealed on the forehead. While the bishop is putting the seal on you, he
says: ‘N. is sealed in the name of the Father, etc.’ This sign shows you
that, when the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit were named, the Holy Spirit
came upon you. You were anointed by him and received him by God’s grace. He is
yours and remains within you. You enjoy the first-fruits of him in this life,
for you receive now in symbol the possession of the blessings to come. Then you
will receive the grace in its fulness, and it will free you from death, corruption,
pain and change; your body too will last for ever and will be free from decay,
and your soul will not be liable to any further movement towards evil.
28.
Such, then, is the second birth which we receive at baptism, and which you are now
about to approach. We hope that this baptism will enable us to pass in reality
to this dread birth of the resurrection. Baptism assures us of the resurrection,
a resurrection which in signs and symbols we already enjoy sacramentally by
faith. The fact that we receive a double birth, and pass from the first to the
second, need not surprise us, because even in our physical existence we receive
a double birth, first from a man and then from a woman. First we are born from
a man and then from a woman. Everyone knows that the seed bears no resemblance
to a human being until it has been conceived, shaped and brought to birth by a
woman according to the laws of nature decreed by God. So too at baptism we are
born in seed, but not yet in the immortal nature which we hope to attain at the
resurrection: we do not yet bear the least resemblance to it. But if in faith
and hope of the future blessings we shape our selves by a Christian life, when
the time of the resurrection comes, according to God’s decree we shall receive
a second birth from the dust and assume this immortal and incorruptible nature.
‘Christ our Saviour’, says St Paul, ‘will change your lowly body to be like his
glorious body’.
29.
When you have undergone the sacramental birth of baptism in this way, you will
come forward to receive the food of immortality, the food that will be in
keeping with your birth. On a later occasion you will be able to learn about
this food and the way in which it is offered to you. But now at the end of this
instruction you are going to receive the birth of baptism; you have come forward
not to share in the indescribable light by means of this second birth. So for
the moment our words have, so to speak, wound you tightly in swaddling bands to
keep you in mind of this birth which is about to take place. Here, then, we
shall let you rest in silence; at a suitable time we shall bring you to this divine
food and explain it to you. But now let us end our address in the usual way,
praising God the Father, his only-begotten Son and the Holy Spirit, now and for
ever. Amen. (Theodore of Mopsuestia, Baptismal Homily, III.25-29, in Edward
Yarnold, The Awe Inspiring Rites of Initiation: Baptismal Homilies of the
Fourth Century [Slough, U.K.: St Paul Publications, 1971], 206-10)
