The Baptism of Jesus Christ

Last night:
4-year old: "Does everyone get married?"
No, Jesus wasn't married.
"Yes he was. Because he got his head dunked under water."
Oh....?

This morning: 🤯 pic.twitter.com/1cEXkb0dDh

— Mark Perkins (@mporterperkins) August 20, 2021

Being Baptized into Christ

Remembering and Sharing Our Baptism | The Church gives us these Sunday reminders after Holy Pascha to help us remember our baptism. We are called to remember “Whom We have Put On” on that transformative day that we became a Christian. https://t.co/8ESiXPjHlr pic.twitter.com/2GeBYVQzAb

— Pravmir.com (@Pravmir_English) May 29, 2021

Baptism with Water and Baptism in the Holy Spirit Together

Not baptism by water alone.

Do you realize what the Church gave you when you were baptized and chrismated with the oil?
Empowered By The Holy Spirit https://t.co/LeWGYkpiny via @FrBarnabas

— Fr. Barnabas Powell (@FrBarnabas) October 19, 2020

No Reform to Latin Christian Initiation in Sight

Bishop Barron still emphasizing Baptism by water alone as Christian initiation. When will Latins reform their rite of Christian initiation so that all are initiated with Baptism, the Gift of the Holy Spirt, and maybe First Holy Communion as well?

Friends, Baptism is objective: the visible sign of invisible incorporation into the Mystical Body of Jesus. Every baptized person is, objectively speaking, a child of God, divinized, and destined to be a great saint.

Watch the video on YouTube: https://t.co/WTRvVUL2nX

— Bishop Robert Barron (@BishopBarron) September 25, 2020

Weigel on Eucharistic Offering (or Sacrifice)

CWR Dispatch: Rediscovering Eucharistic Amazement by George Weigel
If Christ is not the principal actor in the celebration of the Eucharist, then the Mass is a social ritual, the community’s celebration of itself.


This caught my attention at first glance:

How many Catholics understand that we are called to the weekly celebration of the Eucharist so that, in union with Christ the Head of the Body, we might offer ourselves to the Father along with the eucharistic Christ who is offered?

But his reporting of the recent Vatican response on the proper form for Baptism in the Roman rite is of interest too:

The question the Congregation had to answer was whether Baptism is validly conferred by saying “In the name of the father and mother, the godfather and godmother, the family, the friends, and in the name of the community, we baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” The answer was “No.” Why? Because the ancient formula, “I baptize you….” expresses the bedrock truth the Second Vatican Council inscribed in its Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy: “When anyone baptizes, it is Christ himself who baptizes.” To speak of “we” baptizing is to suggest that the Church invents the sacraments rather than her being created by the sacraments. And that, to cite an image from Father Robert Imbelli, is to decapitate the Body of Christ.

Christ is the principal actor in the sacramental drama of Baptism. Christ acts through the baptizer, to be sure. But it really is Christ who acts. Otherwise, Baptism would be merely a welcoming rite rather than the radical reconfiguration of a person to Christ as a member of his Mystical Body, the Church.

Repeating a Latin Error

Which is based on ignoring the plain sense of scripture.

CWR Dispatch: Rediscovering baptism in plague time by George Weigel
As the Catholic Church has understood it for two millennia, baptism is far, far more than a welcoming ritual: baptism effects a fundamental change in who we are, what we can “see,” and what we must do.

(also published at First Things)

As the Catholic Church has understood it for two millennia, baptism is far, far more than a welcoming ritual: baptism effects a fundamental change in who we are, what we can “see,” and what we must do.

Being born again by water and the Holy Spirit in baptism, we become far more than [fill in the name] of a certain family, address, and nationality. We become living cells in the Mystical Body of Christ: members of the New Israel, the beloved community of the New Covenant, destined for eternal life at the Throne of Grace where the saints celebrate what the Book of Revelation calls the Wedding Feast of the Lamb in the New Jerusalem (Revelation 19:7, 21:2). We become the people in whom humanity’s greatest hopes, incapable of fulfillment by our own devices, will be realized.

Being reborn by water is not the same as being reborn by the Holy Spirit - there are two distinct actions required, the latter being the laying on of hands by the Apostles (or their successors), which act was subsequently replaced by the anointing of oil (though some rites still have the laying upon of hands).

This is just a poor attempt at a theological justification for the continued separation of Baptism and Confirmation, made necessary by the Latin practice of reserving Confirmation to the bishop. Latins should be afraid to ask the question of what is the effect of their infant neophytes not receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit later in life, if ever. Thus there is a psycholigical need to pretend that the Holy Spirit is given at Baptism, even if this is not warranted by Apostolic practice or the Apostolic understanding of our participation in the Mystery of Christ.

What Is Baptism without Chrismation?

The unanswered question Western Christians should be asking.

What Is Baptism? by Peter J. Leithart

It Would Be in Opposition to Scripture

but I am curious if there is a theological argument to be made that a baptism that is not immediately completed by chrismation is not a complete baptism and therefore not valid. It is unlikely that this is the justification used by some Chalcedonian Orthodox to rebaptize Latins who decide to become Orthodox, but could they make such an argument? (I say it would be in opposition to Scripture because the New Testament records that many were baptized and received the gift of the Holy Spirit only later through the laying on of hands by the Apostles but they did not have to repeat Baptism.


Perhaps it is just incomplete, then, even if the consequences of this cannot be immediately elucidated.

Sacraments of Initiation - Baptism

Baptized into Christ - Rev. Deacon Daniel Dozier from God With Us Online on Vimeo.

Unbaptized Infants

Infant Baptism

50 Days?

NLM

Holy Baptism

A Review of an Important Book

Can You Baptize Without Baptism? Review: The Ecclesiological Renovation of Vatican II by Fr. Peter Heers - reviewed by Fr. John Cox

John 20:21-22

Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I send you.” \And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”

If we assume that this correlates to Genesis and other passages in the Old Testament pertaining to the creation of man, and is therefore an act of the new creation, to what does this act of breathing on the apostles correspond? Baptism? (There is an unsettled question as to if and when the apostles were baptized in water.) Or, if they had been baptized in water before the death and resurrection of Christ, a completion of that baptism as Christ had not died and been resurrected yet?

The Wedding Garment

Baptism

Marian Consecration

Are Marian Consecrations, whether the version of St. Louis of Montfort or someone else, have taken a hold in the Latin West if the West had had a better liturgical spirituality and liturgical theology? Shouldn't our consecration to God the Father, initiated through Baptism which makes us adopted sons, and repeated in every Eucharist, be sufficient? What about analogues in the East?

wiki
Total Consecration: Consecration Explained
Consecration Prayer to Mary

Baptism

The Necessity of Baptism for non-Orthodox Christians Converting to the Orthodox Church

An Orthodox makes the case...

Pravoslavie: The Recognition of the Baptism of the Heterodox as the Basis for a New Ecclesiology (In Step with Vatican II)
A paper delivered at the Theological-Academic Conference "The Great and Holy Council: Great Preparation without Expectations," March 23, 2016 in Piraeus, Greece

(via Byz, TX)