JANUARY 2020


Water is blessed at the Easter Vigil. In that blessing we retell the story of passage through the Red Sea into the Promised Land of new life in Christ. Trough the ritual waters of baptism, the neophyte is purified, justified, sanctified and incorporated into the Body of Christ, the Paschal Mystery, and the communion of saints.


We recommit to our baptismal promises in order to go out and live another year of committed discipleship—like the woman who went out and took a homeless woman dying of cancer into her home and the man who gave up his job so another man would not lose his.


Baptism converts hearts and souls that are open to that holy fire of conversion. When the symbols are strong in liturgy, when there is water enough to die in, the power of the sacrament speaks not only to the neophyte but also to the entire community. We must ask the question: Are we willing to die in those waters? What sin still lurks above the surface?


One theologian puts in perspective why this sacrament should never be relegated to the cobwebs of forgotten and overlooked rituals. “[O]ne learns to be a Christian, and yet one can never learn the faith, it is always given, like a surprise, a birth, a resurrection from the dead. One is given the gift of faith and the bath, and yet that gift draws to perpetual learning and a change in one’s life.”13


How, then, could we, dare we, ever forget and overlook so great a sacrament?


1 Aidan Kavanagh, Te Shape of Baptism: Te Rite of Christian Initiation, (New York, Pueblo, 1978), 153.


2 Sacramental theology interprets a sacramental symbol as that which embodies the reality it signifies. In other words, if a symbol could speak it would say, “I am”, not “I am like, or I resemble.” Tus, bread becomes the reality of Jesus’ Body; it does not merely resemble or remind us of his Body; it is the Body of Christ.


3 Sharing the Light of Faith, National Catechetical Directory for Catholics in the United States. #42, in Te Catechetical Documents, A Parish Resource, 1996, Archdiocese of Chicago: Liturgy Training Publications, 226.


4 Ibid.


5 “Joseph E. Grassi, “Water,” in Collegeville Pastoral Dictionary of Biblical Teology, (Collegeville, Minnesota: Te Liturgical Press, 1996), 1060.


6 Mary Birmingham, Word and Worship Workbook for Year C, (New York: Paulist Press, 1999), 253.


7 Kathleen Hughes, RSCJ, “Water: Pastoral Liturgical Tradition,” Collegeville Pastoral Biblical Dictionary (Collegeville: Te Liturgical Press, 1996), 1062.


8 Deut. 11: 14-17 9 Mt 3: 13-17


10 Te early church understood the story of the Samaritan Woman to be one of three premier catechetical texts for those preparing for baptism. (Te story of the man born blind and the raising of Lazarus were the other two gospels used in baptismal preparation.)


11 Foot washing was a primary baptismal ritual in fourth century Milan thus connecting baptism with Jesus’ command to wash the feet of others.


12 St. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 40, 3-4: PGJ.P. Migne, edited by Patrologia Latina Supplement, 36 361C.


13 Gordon W. Lathrop, Holy Tings, a Liturgical Teology, (Minneapolis, Minnesota: Augsburg Press, 1993), 60.


Mary Birmingham is the former director of music, liturgy and Christian Initiation at Ascension Catholic Church in Melbourne, Florida, and a former presenter for the North American Forum


on the Catechumenate. An accomplished author and national clinician, she is one of the foremost authorities on Christian Initiation. She holds a master’s degree in liturgy/theology from Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota.


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