As Lent enters its final phase and the Paschal Triduum draws near, I thought it might be timely to share a talk I gave at Fairfield University a little more than a year ago: “Become Who You Are: Women, Baptism, and the Post-Vatican II Church.”
It deals mainly with the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults, and how the reform of baptism – and indeed the rediscovery of baptism in its fullness — remains a vital aspect of the renewal of the Church today, “from the bottom up.”
Part of what I wanted to point out was the radical equality of women and men embodied in the central expressions of our baptismal tradition. A profound commonality unites us, and needs to be affirmed and treasured as part and parcel of the “new identity” we take on in Christ (see Galatians 3:28). This heritage is important, yet I find it is easily overlooked.
I also wanted to lift up the existence of numerous female referents in the Paschal Vigil—another instance of a rich aspect of the tradition, too often neglected:
Our baptismal tradition is laced through with female symbolism and imagery. As I have studied the Easter Vigil in particular, I am struck by how many artful examples of this there are, to say nothing of the female referents in the visual arts and scriptures traditionally associated with baptism in Christian history. Some of this tradition has been suppressed. But other elements remain . . .
Most of all, I wanted to voice a concern that, after a promising beginning in the reform of Christian initiation, we are experiencing today “a certain stagnation of our collective imagination concerning baptism, a sclerosis in our ability to take the gains of the Council concerning baptism and translate them into meaning for ourselves and into passion for what they represent and could mean for the Church.”
A panel of respondents followed the talk. Given the many issues raised, it became clear that we have much work to do. One of the respondents, animated by interest in some of the observations I made about baptismal fonts, went looking for a font in her church. She had to look for it! She then attended an infant baptism, to which the family and guests paid almost no attention—a fact which plainly shocked her. There you have it. That is the status of baptism, still, in many places.
Yet there is hope, because all the good potential of our baptismal polity remains here, waiting to be discovered. And it contains nothing less than the excitement and promise of the whole Christian life:
The dynamics of Christian life itself are what shape our rites of initiation: Opening up the scriptures, walking the way of faith with companions on the journey, discovering Christ in our midst, recognizing him in the breaking of the bread, and going forth to announce the good news that “he is alive.”
These dynamics, ritualized and celebrated in a believing community, cannot fail to change us.
[An edited and abbreviated version of the talk also appeared in the September 28, 2015 issue of Commonweal magazine, as “Late to the Font: Whatever Happened to Adult Baptism?”]
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