Welcome everybody! Congratulations on completing your full initiation into the Church. You received the Sacraments and now… well, now what? We talk about the Sacraments of Initiation – Baptism, Confirmation, and Eucharist – as an initiation because it is the start, the beginning of a new way of life.
While you physically received the Sacraments of Initiation at the Easter Vigil, these sacraments are not “finished” – they continue to work in your life. Through these sacraments, which are “a real participation in the grace of Christ, by a sacramental imitation of His life” (118), namely in His death and resurrection, you received their life-giving fruit. Since God exists in eternity, beyond time, His saving actions and grace exist beyond time; they are always there. To us, who live in history, they reach into the past, present, and future. God continues to act in our world and in us, through consistent characteristic ways, through “types.” Looking at these connections, these types, can deepen our understanding of God’s action in the Old Testament and the New Testament, stretching out into our time through the Sacraments. The prophets proclaim “that the realities of the past of Israel are the expression of eschatological events” that will be analogous or even greater to them (113). These eschatological events are accomplished in Christ. The Sacraments begin “a new creation which [introduces] the Chrisitan even now into the Kingdom of God” (17). As fully initiated members of the Church, you are now living in the Kingdom of God – or at least the part that has begun.
So what does this mean for you now? We’re going to look at each Sacrament you received at the Easter Vigil, identifying how some of the visible signs used have been used by God in the past and therefore how they could therefore affect the rest of your life. In Baptism you were immersed in water. In the Old Testament, the water of the Red Sea was deadly, but God’s victory over death prevailed in Israel’s safe passage – later celebrated as the Passover, marking Israel’s the passing from death to life; this celebration occurs during the Paschal Mystery, when Jesus conquers death with resurrected life. “The relation of Baptism to the death of Christ is especially emphasized by the triple immersion, an allusion to the paschal triduum” (46). Just as God used water to move enslaved Israel from death to life, God used the waters of Baptism to move you from death from sin (in the baptismal water) to the hope of eternal life. Being clothed in white afterwards reinforced your purity and the incorruptibility of your body; your body no longer faces eternal death but will rise. You can now live the rest of your life without the fear and dread of death. For you, death can lose its sting.
Baptism includes the sphragis – the signing of the cross on your forehead. This marking echoes the biblical branding of those who were to be protected; Cain bears a sign so no one will kill him, the doorposts and lintels of the Israelites were marked to protect them from the angel of death, the foreheads of the future remnant were stamped to save them slaughter. The sphragis you received protects you likewise. You are branded as God’s, and the Good Shepherd recognizes and protects His sheep. The Church Fathers frequently proclaim that the sphragis “makes the Christian fearful to demons” (59). Now you only need to make the sign of the cross, God’s sign, to repel evil. The sphragis was also used to enlist in the military when someone wanted to serve the king. With your new mark, you are committed to serve the true King; for the rest of your life you are to serve God, to live for Him. Ultimately, this branding with the sign of the cross is the sign of the New Covenant that began in Christ. Like a tattoo, this mark is permanent. The New Covenant is irrevocable. This New Covenant you have with God means that you have an unchangeable “right to the blessing of grace” (68) to which you can always appeal. No matter how far away you may walk in the future, God will always be there waiting for you with open arms.
The anointing with chrism that marked your Confirmation made you a “christo” – a new Christ (Christ means “anointed one”!) by configuring you to Christ who is anointed by the Holy Spirit. You, like Christ, were anointed with oil like a priest or king would have been in the Old Testament. Just as oil was used for healing and strengthening athletes, this oil strengthens your spiritual life, helping to perfect your soul through gifts of the Holy Spirit. You can continue to receive these gifts with an open disposition, or you can close yourself off to their reception and growth. Chrism, you may remember from the Easter Vigil, is not just oil – it is perfumed oil. It has a characteristic scent. This aroma awakens the spiritual senses, allowing one to perceive Christ, and “The perception of the pleasant perfume of God is proportionate to the capacity of those who breathe it” (123). Because of your Confirmation, you can now perceive God better and in new ways.
The Eucharist is saturated with significance and typologies so I will limit myself to one: the meaning of the Eucharist in connection to manna. This comparison is well founded – Jesus himself makes it in John’s Gospel, stating, “Your fathers ate the manna in the desert, but they died…I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever” (John 6:49,51). Therefore, according to St. Ambrose, the bread of the Eucharist “communicates to you the substance of eternal life” (149). Both manna and the Eucharist cannot be procured by human effort. They are both gratuitous gifts of God. They are also given daily unlike the Sacraments of Baptism and Confirmation – Sacraments only given once. Because the Eucharist is repeated over and over and is rooted in the death and resurrection of Christ, “the Eucharist is seen to be the prolongation of the other sacraments” (128); the Passion and Resurrection continue to apply their effects to the soul over one’s life through Communion. The Eucharist, like manna, “is the nourishment of the people of God in their journey toward the land of promise” (161), but “the Chrisitian message is not only that of heavenly salvation, but of salvation already gained” (190). While Judaism provides manna with an eschatological significance, trusting that God will provide miraculous food again in the new eschatological Exodus, the New Testament shows that this eschatological nourishment is here now in the Eucharist. Communion gives us a foretaste of the great heavenly feast; In participating in the Eucharist, we can continue to receive the grace of the Paschal Mystery and begin to taste eternal life.
The entire process of Initiation is a participation in Christ’s death and resurrection, making us new creations that can begin our eternal life now as we participate in the in-breaking of the Kingdom and prepare for that to come by continuing to engage in the sacramental life of the Church. You can carry on the fruits of Initiation on your Christian journey.