CONVENTION 2020


THE PLENUMS


Te centerpiece of each convention afternoon was a plenum presentation by one of our four brilliant speakers, as they walked with us through the baptismal journey. Fr. Paul Turner brought us to the font to be reborn, Mary Birmingham anointed us, Fr. Joseph Brown clothed us in our baptismal garment, and Michael Ruzicki handed us the light of Christ.


Excerpted from


Initiation and Paschal Mystery: Death to New Life


By Paul Turner


Te resurrection of Jesus has its greatest impact on you once you meditate on the death of Jesus. If he did not die, he could not have risen; there would have been nothing to rise from.


You remember how Charles Dickens begins A Christmas Carol: “Marley was dead: to begin with. Tere is no doubt whatever about that . . . Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.” When Marley’s ghost appears, its impact comes from the certitude that Marley was dead.


Te gospels too are keen to tell us that Jesus had died. After the crucifixion, when the soldiers approached Calvary to break his legs and speed his death, they discovered Jesus had already died (John 19:34). John says he got this from the


testimony of an eyewitness (19:35). After Jesus rose, he showed the marks of his death. Most famously he invited Tomas to touch death, to thrust his hand into the wounds (John 20:27).


He had shown the same marks to the disciples in Jerusalem on the evening of the resurrection, right after the journey to Emmaus, when he revealed himself to two disciples, interpreting the scriptures and then breaking bread. When they recognized Jesus, he vanished (Luke 24:13-35). But suddenly he appeared back in Jerusalem. He announced to


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